Are there some hex editors for Windows? Preferably open source or free since I don't need a hex editor all that often...
Things I do need is the ability to search in different types (text, raw hex, little endian short, big endian short, etc.) and viewing by type (same as searching types) starting at the selected byte. It would be nice to be able to create structs on the fly, so I can view binary blobs in the file. Binary file comparison is also a must, hopefully it would be smart and enable block detection.
I do know about the list on Wikipedia, but I don't really have time to try the 60 or hex editors, and I was wondering what other people use.
79 Answers
Free Hex Editor (frhed), small and fast.
Personally, I use HxD (Free but not open source). Particular features of note include the ability to open very very large files, and you can modify raw disk data and open and edit data in RAM.
UltraEdit has a hex editor mode:
For an old school DOS style display, ZTreeWin:
(neither are free / open source).
XVI32 is a freeware hex editor running under Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP.
Cygnus Hex Editor is a powerful file editor for Microsoft Windows. Unlike text editors, which are designed to edit files that contain text data, hex editors allow you to edit files that contain any type of data.
Free Hex Editor Neo is award-winning large files optimized freeware editor for everyone who works with ASCII, hex, decimal, float, double and binary data.
HxD is a carefully designed and fast hex editor which, additionally to raw disk editing and modifying of main memory (RAM), handles files of any size.
3Notepad++ with a hex editor plugin. I was already using the text editor, so this makes for one less application installed.
PSPad can edit in hex, and it's free too.
Since I can hexedit in Vim as well, I tend to say ... Vim!
(Though I usually use HxD.)
10Winhex is a decent tool for that.
This is a Stack Overflow version of the same question. There are a few more options so you can pick from the several recommended there if you do not like Winhex.
If you want a hex editor that works from the command line, I like Hexciting.
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