Where is hosts file in windows

The Hosts file in Windows 11/10, is used to map hostnames to IP addresses. This Hosts file is located deep down in the Windows folder. It is a plain text file, and the size of the original default Hosts file is around 824 bytes.

The HOSTS file is used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows. This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should be placed in the first column, followed by the corresponding host name. Moreover, the IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one space.

In this post, we will see its location and also how to manage, lock, or edit the Hosts file in Windows 11/10. We will discuss the following:

• Host file location
• Lock Hosts file to prevent hijacking
• Block website using the Hosts file
• How to edit the Hosts file
• Using free Hosts File Editor software.

Let us take a look at them.

Host file location in Windows

The Hosts file in Windows is located at the following location:

C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc

Lock Hosts file to prevent hijacking

Imagine clicking on www.thewindowsclub.com and seeing a completely different website load in your browser. Malware can redirect Web addresses on your computer by altering your Hosts file. This is referred to as the Host File Hijack.

To prevent Host file hijacks, you may navigate to it, right-click on it, select Properties and make it a Read-only file. This will lock down your Hosts file and prevent anyone or any malware from writing to it.

Block website using the Hosts file

To block a website using the Hosts File, simply add the following entry:

127.0.0.1       blocksite.com

Although I do not do it, many users like to manually add entries to it in order to block the opening of one or more particular websites. Others, like to download and use List from well-known sources like mvps.org, to add entries that block malware sites from opening.

How to edit Hosts file in Windows 11/10

To edit the Hosts file in Windows 11/10:

1. Open Explorer
2. Navigate to \System32\drivers\etc\ location
3. Locate Hosts file
4. Right-click on it and select Notepad
5. Make the changes and Save.

Now let us go into a detailed explanation.

To edit the Hosts file, navigate to the following folder location:

C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\

Here you will see the Hosts file. Right-click on it and select Notepad. Make the changes and Save.

But sometimes, even when you are logged on with administrative credentials, you may receive the following error message:

Access to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\ hosts was denied

Or

Cannot create the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts file. Make sure that the path and file name are correct.

In this case, type Notepad in Start search and right-click on the Notepad result. Select Run as administrator.

Open the Hosts file, make the necessary changes, and then click Save.

Using free Hosts File Editor software

If you are looking for an easier way, you can use a free Hosts file Editor software.

1] Using HostsMan

While you can always manually manage or edit Hosts file manually, I would like to suggest that you use a third-party freeware tool like HostsMan to do it.

HostsMan is a feature-rich tool that lets you add, remove, edit entries in the Hosts file. It also lets you easily add third-party Hosts lists that help in blocking malware sites and lets you easily enable or disable the Hosts file. It includes a built-in hosts file updater & a hosts editor. It lets you scan the hosts file for errors, duplicates, and possible hijacks – and also lets you create an Exclusion list. One more useful feature it offers is the Hosts file backup manager. Backup your Hosts file to a safe place and use it to restore it, should the need arise.

Hostman also lets you Flush DNS cache, open Hosts with a text editor, count the number of hosts, find duplicates, replace IP, scan hosts for malicious entries, rearrange hosts, manage DNS Client Service and more. In short, it’s the only Hosts Manager that you will even need. You can download it from its home page.

2] Using SysMate Hosts File Manager

SysMate Hosts File Manager and is another tool that lets you do so. With Host File Walker you can add as many records to the system hosts file. It even lets you backup and restore the Hosts File.

3] Using Host File Editor tool

Host File Editor is another good tool that you can use. It has the following features:

• Enable and disable hosts file from the system tray
• Cut, copy, paste, duplicate, enable, disable and move entries
• Filter and sort host entries
• Backup and restore various hosts file configurations when switching between environments
• Ping endpoints to check availability.

You can download it from here. It offers a portable version too.

4] HostsDock

HostsDock is another useful software to edit the hosts file on Windows 11/10 computers. This is an open-source hosts file editor software that also lets you create new local hosts files and save them. You can also connect to a remote hosts file which is an important option. Some other interesting features are also available which are as follows:

1. Syntax Highlighter that can automatically highlight IP addresses, comments, domains, etc., present in the hosts file. It detects all these items by itself and then highlights them
2. Basic editing options like undo/redo, search and replace, cut, paste, etc.
3. Create folding block
4. Test IP addresses in the hosts file with the ping command
5. A navigation pane to quickly switch to local and remote hosts files, check system hosts info, etc.

You can download this tool from eshengsky.github.io. Launch the tool after installation and it will show the system hosts file. After that, you can use the available options to add or create a new hosts file, use editing options, export the hosts file, and more.

5] Hosts File Editor PowerToy

The Hosts File Editor PowerToy also lets you edit the Hosts file.

How do I grant permission to edit the Hosts file in Windows 11/10?

If you want to grant permission to edit the hosts file in Windows 11/10 using Notepad, then you need to run Notepad as an administrator. You should also sign in to your Windows 11/10 system with an administrator account to edit hosts file so that you won’t get any errors while saving the hosts file.

Read: What is LMHOSTS file in Windows?

Do not have permission to edit the Hosts file?

If you are unable to edit the hosts file on Windows 11/10 or you do not have permission to edit the hosts file, then you can use the following solutions:

1. Use Notepad with administrative privileges and then open a hosts file to edit it
2. Copy the hosts file from the original location to the desktop or some other location, edit that file, and then copy the edited file and paste it into the original location to overwrite the hosts file
3. Use some third-party hosts file editing tools, etc.

TIP: See this post if Hosts File is not working in Windows. How to manually reset the Hosts file back to default in Windows may also interest you.

If your browser has been hijacked, you might find this post on Browser Hijacking and Free Browser Hijacker Removal Tools helpful.

1. What’s My DNS?

2. Hosts File — How and why to edit your DNS Hosts File

The hosts file is a file on your computer or other device that is used as the first step in the DNS lookup process for DNS hostname resolution.

This is the process of converting a domain name like www.example.com into an IP address like 192.168.2.1 which computers and network devices use to communicate with each other.

Making changes to your systems hosts file lets you intercept the normal DNS lookup process and set any IP address for any domain name you like which can be useful for many reasons, but also potentially harmful in some circumstances.

The hosts file can be found in the following locations depending on your operating system:

• Windows: C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts
• Linux: /etc/hosts
• MacOS: /etc/hosts

There are several reasons why you may be interested in viewing or editing your hosts file which include:

Testing DNS changes — A common use for making changes to the hosts file is to test changes to DNS records before making them live on the internet. This allows you to make sure a new server setup is behaving as expected before making the changes to your DNS setup and having them live for everyone.

Forcing DNS changes — Often when having made changes to your domain names DNS settings, you will need to wait for DNS propagation as you may have locally cached DNS records and are not seeing the expected updated results. You can flush your DNS cache, or modify your hosts file to temporarily force changes which are not updating fast enough.

Local development — Often setting up custom hostnames for local testing and development can be quite useful. This allows you to configure your system to respond to your local web server on https://www.mysite.test and have your real site live on https://www.mysite.com.

Ad & content blocking — As the hosts file lets you override DNS entries for any domain name, people often create hosts file entries for common tracking, spyware, malware domains as well as product activation servers to assist with software piracy. There are lists of common ad networks and tracking servers available online which you can use to keep an up-to-date list of sites to block. Blocking is achieved by setting the IP address of the ad networks to a loopback address like 127.0.0.1 which will not return anything.

Checking for compromise — Often if your device is infected with malware, then your hosts file may be compromised to included entries which could cause you harm. For example, if your hosts file had been unknowingly changed to point your banks domain name to the IP address of a hacker. This type of DNS attack is known as DNS pharming, and checking your hosts file can uncover potential infection.

Where is the hosts file located?

The most common question that many people have around the host file is how do you find it? What is the path and location of the hosts file?

Depending on your operating system, the hosts file is located in different locations and requires different methods for editing as it is a protected system file.

Windows host file location

The hosts file for all recent versions of Windows including Windows 7, 8, 10, 11 & Windows Server is located in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts.

There are a few important notes to remember when opening the hosts file on Windows:

• You will need to use a plain text editor like Notepad, not a word processor like Microsoft Word.
• You will need to open the file as the local system administrator. This can be done by right clicking on for example Notepad and choosing «Run as administrator».
• When navigating to the directory containing the hosts file, they may be hidden depending on your setup. Additionally you may need to select to show «All Files (*.*)» instead of the default «Text Documents (*.txt)».

Linux host file location

The hosts file for Unix, Linux and other Unix like operating systems is located in /etc/hosts

As this is a protected system file, you will need to make sure that you edit it as the root user. This can be done using sudo for example sudo vim /etc/hosts from the terminal.

Apple MacOS host file location

The hosts file for MacOS is located in /etc/hosts as MacOS is a Unix based system and follows many of the common file location conventions.

As this is a protected system file, you will need to make sure that you edit it as the root user. This can be done using sudo for example sudo vim /etc/hosts from the terminal.

How do you edit your hosts file?

Once you’ve found the location of your hosts file for your specific operating system, all you need to edit it is a simple plaintext text editor. You can use Windows Notepad, TextEdit on the Mac, as well as command line text editors like vim or nano on Unix based systems.

You will need to make sure that when you’re editing this file that you do so with an account which has administrator privileges as this is a protected system file.

Hosts file format

Once you have located the hosts file, the format is very simple. On a new blank line you need to enter the desired IP address followed by one or more spaces (or tabs) and then the hostname you would like to assign to this. You can add additional hostnames separated by one or more spaces (or tabs) as well.

IP address considerations:

You can use either IPv4 A Records or IPv6 AAAA Records for the IP address which you would like to assign.

If using an IPv6 address, you may want to consider using either the IPv6 expanded format or IPv6 compressed format for all IPv6 entries to ensure consistency and making searching for entries easier if you have large number of them.

Hostname considerations:

When specifying the host name for a hosts file entry, make sure to only include the domain name itself. Do not enter the protocol (http://), or document path (/some-page.html). For example for the webpage http://www.example.com/some-page.html the hostname would be simply www.example.com. If you would also like to include both example.com and www.example.com then you will need to specify both individually.

If using an International Domain Name (IDN), then it will first need to be converted to Punycode format as the host file is plain text and does not accept UTF-8 characters.

Wildcard domains (*.example.com) are not supported in the hosts file.

It is important to make sure that you use a plain text editor like Notepad rather than a word processor like Microsoft Word to edit the hosts file as advanced word processors can introduce unrecognized data like font information.

Example hosts file:

An example hosts file entry may look like the following:

127.0.0.1 example.com

or with multiple entries:

127.0.0.1 example.com
127.0.0.1 www.example.com

or multiple entries on a single line

127.0.0.1 example.com www.example.com

Hosts file comments:

It can sometimes be useful to add comments to your hosts file, especially if you have many entries or entries that you switch between from time to time.

To add a comment, you simply need to use the # character, and anything after this will be ignored.

# this entire line is a comment
127.0.0.1 example.com # this text at the end of a host file entry is a comment
# 127.0.0.2 example.com this entire line a comment and not a valid hosts file entry

The above only includes a single valid hosts file entry for example.com pointing to 127.0.0.1.

How to test changes made to the hosts file?

When you have made changes to your hosts file, you will not be able to use any of the Online DNS Tools to check your changes, instead you will need to rely on your local device for testing.

Using built in DNS tools like nslookup on Windows or dig on Linux and MacOS will query your devices locally configured nameservers directly, skipping reading the hosts file so is not an ideal way of testing changes.

One of the best methods is to use the ping command-line tool, simply run ping example.com and observe which IP address is resolved for the given hostname.

Which hosts file to edit when using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)?

You may wonder which hosts file you need to edit when running multiple operating systems on Windows by taking advantage of WSL.

Making changes to the Linux guest operating systems hosts file at /etc/hosts file will only have changes reflected within the Linux instance.

Editing the Windows hosts file at C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts will have the changes reflected on both Windows and within the Linux instance.

Файл hosts — текстовый документ, который содержит в себе информацию о домене и IP-адресе, который ему соответствует. Файл hosts появился во времена зарождения Интернета (ARPANET) и служил неким маршрутизатором, пока на замену ему не пришла служба DNS. Но до сих пор он не утратил важности и по-прежнему используется как инструмент, который обладает приоритетом перед обращением к DNS-серверам.

Зачем нужен файл hosts

Предположим: вы зарегистрировали домен и привязали его к Hosting Linux. Но чтобы увидеть сайт, вам нужно дождаться делегирования домена на DNS-серверы. В файле hosts вы можете указать ваш домен и IP-адрес хостинга, а затем открыть браузер и зайти на ваш сайт, не дожидаясь делегирования домена. Также с его помощью вы можете заблокировать на локальном компьютере доступ к определённому сайту, указав соответствующую запись.

Где находится файл hosts

Путь к папке, где лежит файл hosts, зависит от операционной системы, которая установлена на вашем компьютере:

• Windows XP, 2003, Vista, 7, 8, 10 — c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
• Linux, Ubuntu, Unix, BSD — /etc/hosts
• macOS — /private/etc/hosts

Редактировать файл etc hosts нужно от имени администратора, иначе вы не сможете сохранить внесённые изменения.

Как внести изменения в файл hosts

Ниже мы рассмотрим, как редактировать и как сохранить изменения в файле hosts. Важно открыть файл с правами администратора, иначе система не даст вам его сохранить. Выберите вашу операционную систему и следуйте инструкции или посмотрите видеоинструкцию:

Видеосправка. Как изменить файл hosts

Также вы можете заблокировать определенный сайт через файл hosts, воспользовавшись инструкцией ниже:

Блокировка доступа к сайту через файл hosts

Доступ к сайту также можно ограничить для локального компьютера. Для этого укажите адрес страницы (домен) в файле hosts. Заблокировать IP нежелательного сайта не требуется. Блокировка осуществляется по локальному хосту с фиксированным IP (127.0.0.1):

Готово! Доступ к сайтам будет ограничен на определенном ПК.

Оригинальный файл hosts и как его восстановить

Скачать содержимое файла hosts можно на разных ресурсах. Но мы не рекомендуем делать это, так как файл может быть заражен.

Файл hosts по умолчанию есть в каждой операционной системе, но он может быть скрыт для просмотра. Следуя инструкциям выше, вы сможете его открыть и отредактировать. Если вы удалили его, то просто создайте текстовый файл без расширения в нужной папке.

По умолчанию файл hosts выглядит следующим образом:

Для Windows

# Copyright (c) 1993-2006 Microsoft Corp.

#

# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server
#       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host
# localhost name resolution is handle within DNS itself.
#       127.0.0.1       localhost
#       ::1             localhost

Для Linux

127.0.0.1       localhost

127.0.1.1      user

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1     ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters

где user (во второй строке) — это имя вашего компьютера.

Для MacOS

##

# Host Database

#

# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1  localhost
255.255.255.255  broadcasthost
::1             localhost

Удалите текущее содержимое из файла hosts, вставьте текст по умолчанию и сохраните изменения.

Теперь вы знаете, как должен выглядеть файл hosts и как с ним работать.