Windows Hosts File

Are you aware about the Windows Hosts file?

  If you are questioning what a host file is, a host file is a Windows plain-text file designed for mapping hostnames to IP addresses along with the host name allocated to your computer is known as local host. Every single website in the internet has an IP address linked to it. At the present, the hosts file works in mapping it to the real domain name. A clean hosts file has usually a single entry for local host. 127.0.0.1 Is the IP of the local host and every domain name in the hosts file which is correlated with this IP cannot access the Internet to keep trapped in your pc. For this reason, security programs can take it your advantage and utilize the hosts file to make your pc less dangerous. Even so, viruses can also edit the file and prevent you from using the internet. Whenever you see a line beginning with a pound sign (#) are called comments, and the primary function is to write descriptions.

    Quite a few people use this secret to block websites – for one example, you can point Facebook.com at 127.0.0.1 that is your PC’s local IP address. When anyone attempts to access Facebook.com on your PC, your PC will connect to itself at 127.0.0.1. It would not find a web server; therefore the connection will instantly fail.

Here are the certain areas of your Windows Hosts file:

• Windows XP - C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc
• Windows Vista - C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc
• Windows 7 - C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc
• Windows 8 - C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc
• Windows 2008 Server - C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc

  You are able to manually fix your Hosts File. Hosts files are simply a plain text file; you can easily amend using a Notepad or any specific text editor. To make changes simply open the Hosts File in your Notepad, make the suitable changes and re-save the file. Open your hosts file by Double-clicking on the Hosts file and selecting to open with Notepad. Delete or remove any lines without the (#) with the exception of the local host entry. Save the file.

  In case you are having troubles following the instruction above you can download a tool from Microsoft to automatically reset your hosts file.

Download the Microsoft Fix it and run to reset the hosts file.