Taking Ownership of hosts file

I'm using a self customized hosts file in Windows 7 Enterprise and am wondering if it would create usablilty problems if I :

1 : Took ownership of the file

and/or

2 : Removed System access

The reason being, making the file read only is constantly and regularly being undone and entries I have are being stripped (mostly windows telemetry). I want to remove any abilities to modify the hosts file without my expressed consent.


Thank you in advance as always.

Wewpt

Hi Wewpt,
Im somewhat confused

Unless you are the administrator of the system you have NO rights at all, and should NOT be able to do this or what your trying to do in your other post as well.
And most likely why you keep losing control of it, as Enterprise editions of W7 are only issued to companies

please copy/paste the output from this tool

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=52012

Roy

Thanks for the response Roy. It's definately Enterprise, I'm one of the Assistant Admins for the company I work for (and part of the default Administrator group) and it is installed on a work laptop that I regularly take home with me for work purposes.

Access to the hosts file was modified to grant our special group access, unbeknownst to me.

Anyways, I've tracked down the issue (entries being removed) to a proprietary script we run as part of a cloud based inventory tracking application and have created an internal ticket within my company to address the issue.

Once again thank you for your assistance :)


Wewpt

P.S. I've edited my system specs to reflect my own personal version of Windows 7 that I run on my personal desktop computer.

Since none of the responses I got did not offer an answer whatsoever, I'll post my findings for anyone interested to consider.

I took ownership of the hosts file, and removed System completely. I retained both the Administrators group and my custom groups full access. I did this in Windows 7 Ultimate and Enterprise, and the outcome was the same.

Does it work? Yes, with one caveat...

Any services or processes that are explicitly run by anything other than myself or the groups I am in, ignore the hosts file altogether. As such if this is an issue or of concern, don't do it.

As well, because this worked for me, I cannot guarantee that it will result in the same outcome for anyone else. So proceed at your own risk. I take no responsibility for any results, positive or negative, that this modification results in.


Wewpt

P.S. I've found while looking for answers to other OS related questions, that Google, and other search engines filter a lot of the results. I've since tried using Tor browser over a bridged connection and it provides me with many more results.

That being said, use at your own risk. Search engines filter some sites with good reason, but if you're willing to take what you read with a grain of salt, do the research to educate yourself, and take the risk, this may provide you with the answers you're looking for.