Why are my HOSTS file changes not taking effect in Windows 10?

Question

I made a change to my hosts file on my Windows 10 machine today, however after saving the changes in Notepad (running as admin) the changes do not appear to work.

For example I would expect this entry:

127.0.0.1 google.com

To stop a page from resolving to Google.com.

However, this doesn't appear to be happening and the web browser resolves to google.

Is there a cache setting I'm missing?

Thanks

Are you sure the page uses google.com and not www.google.com? Entries in hosts file are just for a single domain excluding subdomains. — Robert, Sep 04 '21 at 19:55
Does this answer your question? hosts file ignored, how to troubleshoot? — djdomi, Sep 05 '21 at 15:13

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 04 '21 at 19:15

5

You need to flush the DNS cache in Windows 10

Go to cmd and type

ipconfig /flushdns
ping google.com

now you shut return with 127.0.0.1 and restart your browser shut help to

answered Sep 04 '21 at 19:15

ParisNakitaKejser

287

Thanks. Also cleared browser cache. – Tikhon Sep 04 '21 at 20:23

Why are my HOSTS file changes not taking effect in Windows 10?

1 Answers1