This is a .vbs script to create md5, ripemd160, sha1, sha256, sha384, and sha512 hashes. The MD5.VBS file is self-describing. Just open it in your favorite text editor and read the contents. It's an executable script written in visual basic scripting. Simply drag and drop the files you wish to create md5 hashes for onto the script file with windows explorer (or alternatively you can right-click your target files and select send to md5 -- instructions inside the file for setting up this behavior.) You can also just double-click it to bring up an open file dialog to select a file of your choice, but this method might not work with some versions of windows.
Md5 hashes are mostly just used to verify files were downloaded properly. Once it was used for security, but the hash algorithm has since been compromised. Still works great for verifying files were not corrupted during the download process, though. Typically, the page where the file is available for download will display the Md5 hash for the file. After downloading the file you can use this MD5.VBS script to generate a hash for comparing with the one that was listed on the download page. If they match, you can be assured the download was successful. By default, the script only does Md5, sha1, and ripemd160 hashes, but it's very easy to enable/disable different hashes within the script just by toggling certain variables between True and False.
Very little of the code in the MD5.VBS script is of my own devising, aside from a few minor tweaks. I copied and pasted and put it together from a variety of sources, all of which are noted within the file. Most of my work was involved with finding the information and putting it all together. I'm new to .vbs scripting, but I'm intrigued by the idea that it can access some of the .NET objects, which can make for potentially some very powerful scripts that can be easily user-edited by non-programmers.