Hosts file hack

You can follow the question or vote as helpful, but you cannot reply to this thread. I have the same question Report abuse. Details required :. Cancel Submit. The hosts file is a read only, hidden system file. It is just a text file that you can manipulate with WordPad, Notepad or any text editor. Before modifying the hosts file, make a copy of the current one in case you need to restore the original.

If you use the Microsoft Fix It button, you will have no hosts file when you are done which is not necessarily a bad thing so you may just want to read and follow the instructions for how to fix it yourself. Some third party software scanning tools like Spybot can optionally add entries to the hosts file on purpose to block your browser from loading certain WWW sites entirely or block advertisements from certain WWW sites.

They claim to have a list of sites that most people would like to block and insert them into your hosts file for you. You can always remove entries in the hosts file by hand if desired. Malicious software can also add entries to the host file to redirect your browser to some other WWW site than the one you would really like to visit. For example, if you try to browse to www. Your browser will always be redirected away from www. The malicious software can also modify your hosts file to block your browser from going to Internet sites where you might find a solution for how to remove the malicious software.

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Can you help us improve? Resolved my issue. Clear instructions. Easy to follow. No jargon. Pictures helped. Didn't match my screen. Incorrect instructions. Too technical. Not enough information. Not enough pictures. Any additional feedback? Submit feedback. Thank you for your feedback! You'd have to update the hosts files on your other devices to enable the same shortcuts.

And that should be just about everything you need to know about the hosts file on Windows And a lot of this knowledge should carry over to Linux and macOS. Did you find this helpful? Are there any other hosts file tricks you know? Let me know over on Twitter. If you read this far, tweet to the author to show them you care.

Tweet a thanks. Learn to code for free. Get started. Forum Donate. Kris Koishigawa. But knowing where it is and how it works can be helpful if: you're having trouble with local development you suspect malware has tampered with the hosts file you want a quick and simple way to block some websites or if you want to set up some helpful shortcuts to internal IP addresses In this article we'll cover what a hosts file is , how to edit it on Windows , and we'll go over some neat tricks you can do with it.

What's a hosts file anyway? For example, here's a line you'll find in many hosts files on Windows, Linux, and macOs: Why hosts files fell out of favor The hosts files system worked well for the early internet, but there were a few major problems. As you can imagine, hosts files would get complicated, fast.

The solution If you're thinking that someone should have just made a central repository to map all IP addresses with all hostnames, that's exactly what happened. How to edit a hosts file on Windows To edit a hosts file on Windows 10, you'll need to open it as an administrator. To change the file type, click on the dropdown in the bottom right of the Open menu and click on "All Files": You'll see a file named hosts.

Double click on that file to open it. Then, you'll see a hosts file similar to this: Copyright c Microsoft Corp.