Hands On: Heavenly hosts

Any other entries will direct requests to the domain name in the right-hand column to the IP address on the right, and this takes precedence over a DNS server look-up.

We tried directing requests for www.google.com to the IP address of www.vnunet.com.

If you want to try this you might need to clear your browser’s history and restart Windows for the redirection to take effect.

Although our example is not harmful, it does show the possibilities for malicious attacks. Your online banking, for example, could be diverted to a faked phishing site.

Fortunately the Hosts file can also be used to suppress malware and annoying pop-up adverts by redirecting requests to the offending servers back to the local host. For example:

127.0.0.1 123topsearch.com

will redirect requests to 123topsearch.com to the local machine, meaning nothing will happen. The Microsoft Most Valued Professional site provides a ready-made Hosts file that you can download from www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm. This comes with a batch file to update the existing Hosts file, but if you are using Vista you will need to run this from an elevated command prompt.

Another way – which automatically updates itself – is to install the free Spybot Search and Destroy 1.6 utility, which you’ll find at www.pcw.co.uk/downloads. This redirects spyware, adware and other threats from the Hosts file back to the local host.

Another popular alternative is Hostman. This lets you enable, disable and edit the Hosts file as well as update it from a choice of sources, including the previously mentioned MVPS site.

Seven-up
Windows 7 is officially scheduled for January 2010, but some Windows-watchers predict an earlier launch, with the January date being kept as a fallback.

Leaked screenshots show a radical makeover to some of the Windows applets. Wordpad is being updated, and it looks as if Windows Paint will also be getting a paint job.

Apart from some new file formats – ICO, PNG and TIFF – added in XP, and enhancements to the common Open/Save dialogue, the Vista version of Paint is functionally the same as the Windows 95 one.

The version of Paint seen in pre-beta ‘Milestone 3’ Windows 7 is very different, with a ribbon interface like Office 2007. At the time of writing we are not permitted to show you a screenshot, but by the time you read this there should be plenty available from a web search as the official Beta 1 will have been released.

Whether Paint will have any enhanced capabilities remains to be seen, but it has always been something of a lame duck, so there is plenty of room for improvement. Even back in Windows 3 days Paintbrush, as it was then, couldn’t change the start-up screen as it didn’t support the RLE format (for that you needed something like Paint Shop Pro).