Host file edit in windows xp

If that's the case, no worries — your security software should add all those entries back to your hosts file. We'll go over how this works in the next section.

Don't want friends or family to visit certain websites on your computer? Or are you like me and get distracted by all the cat photos on the internet? Also, close the browser windows that are open and reopen them.

The one downside is that this only works on one device — you could just reach for your phone and browse Reddit on that instead. Still, it's a neat way to create some friction on your work computer. This leads nicely into the last trick, which is to use the hosts file to make your life a little bit easier. If you spend a lot of time adjusting your router's settings, or you have a cool project running on a Raspberry Pi , you'll know that typing in a long IP address is a drag.

Instead, you can use the hosts file to make connecting to other devices on your local network much faster. For example, if your router is at Otherwise your browser might not recognize. Fortunately there are a whole lot of valid TLDs nowadays. Again, the one downside to this method is that it only works on once device. 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.

You try to visit a website and your internet browser keeps on redirecting to different sites, with popups, and content that aren't even close to the address you typed in. Let's look at the Windows XP Host file and how to fix it.

Without going into any great detail you only need to understand the following: Every computer connected to the internet is not assigned a name, it is assigned a number called an IP address.

When you type in an address into your browser such as www. But remember, all computers are assigned a number, so yahoo. No need to get technical but there are services that are "invisible" to you that will take the name, perform a lookup and return the proper computer number so you can make the connection. It just so happens that one of the first places to do a Name to Number lookup is the hosts file on your computer. What does this mean?

If a malicious person wants to hijack your browser and redirect certain addresses to another site they could use the hosts file to do this. All they would need to do is add an entry to the hosts file to redirect any number of sites. So if your browser isn't going where it should be, a good place to look first is the hosts file.

In order to edit the hosts file in Windows 10, it is necessary to know where to find the host file location. Hosts file Windows 10 is stored in a plain text file in the Windows system folder that can be edited for various use cases. This operation involves 2 entries and each entry contains the IP address that you want the site to resolve and a version of an Internet address.

How to edit hosts file Windows 10? To edit the hosts file in Windows successfully, you can follow the steps below:. Step 1. Type notepad in the Windows search box, and then right-click the Notepad app and select Run as administrator. Step 2.

In the Notepad window, click on File and select Open from the context menu. Step 3. In the File name field, paste the following path on it and click on the Open button. Step 4.