Home The Learning Center Windows Workstation Posts Edit Host File in Windows 7 & Vista
Edit Host File in Windows 7 & Vista PDF Print E-mail
Written by Brian Fleishman   
Wednesday, 11 November 2009 14:31

In Windows XP as well as previous versons, editing the host file was a somewhat simple operation. The host file is the one where one enters hostname and IP Address pair manually as against being served by a Name server (ex: DNS). As always the “host” file is under C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\ or %systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc\ and hence cannot be edited by normal users.

Things changed slightly in Windows Vista & Windows 7 due to security changes. You may have found yourself getting access denied messages when trying to save your changes.

Here's how you can accomplish editing your host file in Windows 7 and Windows Vista:

To edit the host file,

Click Start – search for “Notepad“, right-click and select “Run as Administrator“. This should launch notepad with elevated privileges. Now, open the host file from the File menu, edit and save.

Hope this helps.
Last Updated on Monday, 21 December 2009 17:32
 
9 Votes

3 Comments

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  1. avatar Brian Fleishman makes this comment

    Thursday, 03 June 2010

    Should make a difference at all. Are you unable to save the file?

  2. avatar Howard Aiken makes this comment

    Thursday, 03 June 2010

    My customer has installed two Windows 7 clients on an existing SBS 2003 network. I've tried to edit the HOSTS file running notepad as adminisrator and failed every time. Are SBS clients a special case?

  3. avatar Tester makes this comment

    Tuesday, 17 November 2009

    Of course they had to make it more difficult!

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