Updating windows hosts file

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Related Hot Network Questions. Question feed. Server Fault works best with JavaScript enabled. Accept all cookies Customize settings. Microsoft kept the hosts file alive in Windows networking which is why it varies very little whether used in Windows, macOS, or Linux. The syntax stays mostly the same across all platforms. Most hosts files will have several entries for loopback. We can use that for the basic example for the typical syntax.

The first part will be the location to redirect the address to, the second part will be the address that you will want to redirect, and the third part is the comment. They can be separated by a space, but for ease of reading are typically separated by one or two tabs.

Just search for Notepad, then right-click on Notepad in the search results list, and choose to run it as administrator. To access the hosts file in Windows 7 you can use the following command in the Run Line to open notepad and the file. Once notepad is open you can edit the file. In this example we will block Facebook.

To do this just enter in the following after the mark. We also were not able to get to it in Google Chrome… check notes at the end. In Ubuntu You can use your favorite editor or even open your favorite GUI text editor.

For this example we will use VIM. In order to edit the file you will need to open it as root which is why we use sudo here. Now that it is open we can edit it to redirect Facebook into nothing.

You will notice that with Ubuntu there is also a section for IP6. For most needs you will only need to edit it the top section and ignore the IP6. Now we can save the file and try to go to Facebook. Just like in windows we will see that we are now redirected to a site that does not exist.

In macOS, accessing the hosts file is very similar to Ubuntu. The Hosts file is used by the operating system to map human-friendly hostnames to numerical Internet Protocol IP addresses which identify and locate a host in an IP network. The hosts file is one of several system resources that address network nodes in a computer network and is a common part of an operating system's IP implementation. The Hosts file contains lines of text consisting of an IP address in the first text field followed by one or more host names.

Each field is separated by white space Tabs are often preferred for historical reasons, but spaces are also used. Comment lines may be included, and they are indicated by a hash character in the first position of such lines. Entirely blank lines in the file are ignored. If the Hosts file is changed from default, resetting it can help resolve some connectivity issues.

To reset the Hosts file back to the default, follow these steps according to your operating system:. Open Notepad. Copy the following text, and then paste the text into the file: Copyright c Microsoft Corp. This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name. The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one space.

Combine Environment. GetFolderPath Environment. WriteLine " In order to revert back, better take a backup of the file and restore it once you are done. Lotfi Lotfi 1, 6 6 silver badges 18 18 bronze badges. How to remove entries when needed? Generic; using System. Linq; using System. Forms; using Setup. Forms; using System. Principal; using System. EnableVisualStyles ; Application. Administrator ; if! David Anderson David Anderson Note that by copying your code here it's effectively released under CC-Wiki.

The copyright block is ineffective. Not sure if you want to remove the copyright block or the whole answer Either way it doesn't matter, just using it to give him an approach to his question. If I didn't want him to use the code I wouldn't have posted at all. Ah, no biggy.