Just updated HOSTS in Win7; now want to add item

Well there's an explanation on the website and it states:

"Important Note: The HOSTS file now contains a change in the prefix in the HOSTS entries to "0.0.0.0" instead of the usual "127.0.0.1".
This was done to resolve a slowdown issue that occurs with the change Microsoft made in the "TCP loopback interface" in Win8.1."

Now as I use several different sources for hosts files I can see no reason not to replace all 0.0.0.0 entries with 127.0.0.1 using your text editor. Personally I use EmEditor and set a registy entry so that any application that calls notepad.exe to open a file will use emeditor.exe instead.



Note: There are limitations as to what we can discuss. See item 13 here:

Forum Rules

No rules broken! It's just that the topic of blocking sites using a Hosts file can be problematic if you start discussing anything under that rule.

rundwald said:

Thanks!

You mentioned use of different hosts files. Doesn't that lead to a lot of overlapping or possible conflicts? I use MVPS. Were I to use a further host source would they be installed in Windows\System32\drivers\etc as well.

Well yes it does lead to overlapping (duplicates) and if you download a new hosts file it would need merging with the current one rather than letting it replace the old one. The only ways do merge that I know of are manually copying and pasting or else using a Hosts File Manager. If you use a decent one it will remove duplicates.

Re: Your original point.

Obviously the next time you download from the site you use you'll get another 0.0.0.0 hosts file. I suppose that could cause problems if you want to merge it. I guess you will have to put up with manually editing 0.0.0.0 entries for the time being.

This is what I use:

Currently merging hosts files from eight sources and deduplicating after the merge results in almost 1.2 million entries. That takes around 15 minutes every few months to update and de=duplicate.

Mostly anti-malware , anti-exploit and privacy concerns is the reason.