Wildcards in windows hosts file

Active 5 years, 4 months ago. Viewed k times. Is there a way to create a wildcard domain in the Windows hosts file. I tried this xxx. I am working on Windows 7. Improve this question. Saif Bechan Saif Bechan 3, 10 10 gold badges 29 29 silver badges 32 32 bronze badges. XP SP2 included a castration of the host file - securityfocus. This is a guess as far as I know Microsoft has never revealed why they did this and why they are rolling it forward to everything since. If you are able to put in a proxy server between your PC and the internet, then you could put in a block for what you wanted.

Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Phoshi Phoshi XP SP1 included an upgrade to a castration of the host file. Community Bot 1. Curtis Gibby Curtis Gibby 1 1 gold badge 7 7 silver badges 14 14 bronze badges. After that, you should be able to visit localhost in your browser and see whatever you're hacking on. If you're still having issues, try closing your browser completely, then open a new browser window and try again. Even though hosts files have fallen out of favor with newer systems like DNS, they still work for legacy reasons.

And hackers have definitely taken advantage of this in the past. What they would do is point a common website like google. This IP address could serve a site that looks just like Google's, but is actually trying to steal your sensitive information. While this was a problem in the past, most security software like the Windows Security Suite can recognize and fix problems with the hosts file automatically. That said, if you open up your hosts file and see a lot of strange entries, then you may want to revert to the default Windows hosts file.

Just copy and paste the default hosts file from earlier in the article into your hosts file and save. Note that some third-party security software uses the hosts file to block dangerous websites.

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. And if the Acrylic DNS really doesn't work, you can try the method in this post. Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact tnmff microsoft.

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