Home Computer Tips windows hosts file: How to edit and block websites using it?

windows hosts file: How to edit and block websites using it?

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windows-hosts-fileNowadays parents are worries about their children wasting time on the internet and about the activities (sharing Personal information and chatting) that children are doing on social sites.

The only problem is that parents has absolutely no clue about how to block websites – parental control software like Net Nanny or Norton Internet Security are pretty good but they cost money.

see more: 

How to block adult websites? 

The hosts file is one of several system facilities that assists in addressing network nodes in a computer network. It is a common part of an operating system’s Internet Protocol(IP) implementation, and serves the function of translating human-friendly host names into numeric protocol addresses, called IP addresses, that identify and locate a host in an IP network.
Now before Parents take this extreme step of blocking websites (that is very likely to be opposed by children), try a few things:

1. Educate your children about the dangers of sharing information online with strangers. Family members should talk in detail about privacy and the web.
2. Place the computer in the living area of your home from where you can easily see the screen so you’ll have some idea about activities that children are doing on the computer including the websites they are visiting frequently.
3. In social networking sites. Parents can easily see who’s in the friends list of your children and what kind of the text they are exchanging or posting the information on their profile.
Finally, here is the trick to block websites on your home computer without investing in expensive software.

Step to Edit Windows hosts file:

STEP1: Open your windows start menu, search for the notepad application and then right click on the notepad icon.
STEP2: Choose “Run as Administrator” and give permission to open.
STEP3: Inside notepad, browse to folder (C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc) that contains the hosts file. If you could not find. Select notepad file type from “Text Documents *. * “ to “All Files *. *
STEP 4: Now you can edit and save that file in the same folder without any issues. 

To block websites add the below line at the bottom of host file and save. For example to block www.example.com, add below line. you can add as many websites as you want in the similar manner in new lines. and finally save hosts file.

127.0.0.1  www.example.com 

if you want to get back that blocked websites, similar way go to hosts file and remove those lines which you added for blocking and save file. that’s all.

How to edit window host file?

For Windows 10 and 8

  1. Press the Windows key.
  2. Type Notepad in the search field.
  3. In the search results, right-click Notepad and select Run as administrator.
  4. From Notepad, open the following file: c:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts
  5. Make the necessary changes to the file.
  6. Click File > Save to save your changes.

For Windows 7 and Vista

  1. Click Start > All Programs > Accessories.
  2. Right-click Notepad and select Run as administrator.
  3. Click Continue on the Windows needs your permission UAC window.
  4. When Notepad opens, click File > Open.
  5. In the File name field, type C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts
  6. Click Open.
  7. Make the necessary changes to the file.
  8. Click File > Save to save your changes.

Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP

  1. Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > Notepad.
  2. Click File > Open.
  3. In the File name field, type C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts
  4. Click Open.
  5. Make the necessary changes to the file.
  6. Click File > Save to save your changes.

Modifying your hosts file enables you to override the DNS for a domain, on that particular machine. Modifying your hosts file causes your local machine to look directly at the IP address specified.

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Blocking websites by editing windows hosts file Pretty simple but remember, our children are also very smart. And there are some popular ways to unblock websites.