On Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:52:18 -0400, Ed Mullen wrote:

> Why are you jumping through all these hoops? The Windows "hosts" file
> is a plain text file you can edit in Notepad.

I know, I know.

Microsoft put the c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file in the most
ridiculous non-intuitive spot it could possibly find, deep in muck, deep
under large directories that take a while to load, and without a decent
extension so you have to grope for your text editor (mine is vim freeware).

So, rather than "jump thru hoops" each time just to edit the hosts file, I
add a one-time-only registry key "hosts" which opens up the TEXT file (so
that I have a backup if I need it).

When I type "Start -> Run -> hosts", vim opens up that
c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts.txt text file, where I edit and save
to "hosts" which it saves in the current directory (i.e.,
c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts).

That's a LOT easier than navigating deep into the windows hierarchy into
the least logical place MS could have placed the hosts file and then
fumbling around to get notepad to edit the file with no extension.