Can't get into certain sites? read on.
I have just spent 2 hours of my time trying to
get 7search.com and searchfeed.com to show up on ANY of my 4 browsers (5
by the time I finished I had installed Safari) and I was at my wits ends.
I NEED to write it here so next time I get into a similar problem I'll
know I have a place to remind me.
I uninstalled xampp, Spybot and another 10 programs I recently installed,
messed with services after having previously disabled all unnecessary
functions, opened up the firewall and almost got virused up in the
process, etc etc.
Eventually it hit me:
THE HOST FILE!!!
Sure enough, Spybot decided it didn't like
7search.com and searchfeed.com and dumped them both into the ignore list
together with a quadrillion other sites, associating them to the numbers
for localhost..
So, if you ever get into a similar problem, check the host file first.
By then I was so fed up I wiped the whole content of the host file,
just in case.
Ideally in there you might want to add the sites you usually go to and
have their IP address next to them so you can save a nanosecond.
Win95/98 hosts file location:
Windows 95/98/Me c:\windows\hosts
Win2k hosts file location:
Windows NT/2000/XP Pro c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Xp hosts file location :
Windows XP Home c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Update
This is the day after and I have a bit more time to go over this a tad
further.
To check if your system is affected by this problem, open your Command
Prompt (go to Start -> Run, type cmd, and hit Enter).
In the Command Prompt window, type this command:
ping 7search.com
or
ping yahoo.com
if you can't get into yahoo.
If the result comes back with IP address of 127.0.0.1, (which is your
local computer) the site is sitting in your host file as blacklisted.
In other words, your computer has censored the site for you and each time
a site you ping comes up with the above IP address, it means the site is
backlisted.
To fix this, go back to your command prompt and type:
--> c:\windows\
if you are using Win95/98
-->
c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\
if you are using Win2k
-->
c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\
if you are using XP
then look for the file called "hosts", right click on it then go to propertie,s deselect the box
"read only" then hit ok.
Now you can either open it up using notepad, look for the affected site
and delete it, together with the 127.0.0.1
number on its left, sometimes there are two entries, one with the www and
one without, you can delete both. Close the file saving it then right lick
it and set it to read only again.
Or you can replace it with this brand new hosts file.
Make sure it stays with no extension and it is read only. Of course if mess it up and get into any sort of problems I should not be held responsible, do this stuff at your own peril
have fun.
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