INTRODUCTION

The hosts file contained in this zip file can prevent sites listed in it from accessing your computer. These sites include spyware sites and ad sites which will waste your bandwidth and sometimes even cause damage to your computer by installing stuff on it. It is not a complete list of sites, since sites change and new ones start. But it has many so it helps a lot.

HOW IT WORKS

The way it works is like this. The name of each site listed in the hosts files is preceded by the IP address 127.0.0.1. This address is the localhost address of your computer. So if one of those websites should try to get your computer to communicate with their computer, it will not because your computer will be told by the hosts file that there computer address is on your computer. But since it is not, it will recieve no information and at the most open an empty popup window with nothing in it or blank spots may appear in a site you accessed, which just means that some ad site is being blocked by your file. You can add or remove any site you want by simply using the format you see in the hosts file.

IF A SITE IS NOT WORKING THAT NORMALLY DOES

If some site you normally go to is not working, open the file in wordpad, locate the site and add a # to the beginning of that line. Then save the file and try to access the site again. It should work now. Putting a # in front of any line will deactivate that line allowing access to that site, because the # causes windows to ignore that line. A word of caution however: you MUST save the file in text format. If you save it in ANY OTHER format, it will not work anymore. It must be saved in text format.

HOW TO INSTALL

Create a folder to put hosts.zip in. Unzip hosts.zip into the folder. You can use 7zip which you can get for free at http://www.7-zip.org/ or if your version of Windows has a zip utility built in, that should work fine too. You will now have hosts.bak and (an older version of) this instruction file.

For Windows 95, 98 and ME, copy hosts.bak to:
c:\windows\hosts
c:\windows\hosts.sam
c:\windows\lmhosts.sam

The command to use from a dos command prompt is:
copy /a hosts.bak c:\windows\hosts (repeat the command for the other 2 files)

To open a command prompt window, go to Start>Run and type 'command'.
Windows should only require hosts, but I have seen it not work until
it was all three of those files. You may want to back up your old files
first by renaming them with ".old" as an extension. That way you
will have them if you ever need them in the future. You may need to
restart your computer before hosts will work.

For Windows NT, XP and 2000, copy hosts.bak to:
c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\lmhosts.sam
OR if your windows is in a winnt directory then copy to
c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\lmhosts.sam

The command to use from a dos command prompt is:
copy /a hosts.bak c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts (repeat for lmhosts.sam)

To open a command prompt window, go to Start>Run and type 'cmd'.
You may want to back up your old files first by renaming them with '.old'
as an extension. That way you will have them if you ever need them
in the future.

For Linux,
Back up your old hosts file to /etc/hosts.old
copy hosts.bak to: /etc/hosts
Make sure that you replace the localhost line in this file with the localhost line your old hosts file. It should work immediately.

Important Disclaimer

Some of the sites listed below offer programs and scripts to protect your computer from adware/spyware. I have not tried any programs and only personally recommend a hosts file placed in the right place in your operating system to protect your computer from adware/spyware. That is not to say that some of those programs/scripts might be good, and may work well. But if you should decide to try one or more of these programs/scripts, you do so at your own risk. A host file present no risk if maintained properly, and can protect you from internet addresses that serve harmful webpage content.

Download my hosts file (hosts.zip)

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