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Hosts file in Windows XP? Modified now IE7 doesnt work right?

Fairly technical person here - but, I edited the HOSTS file in my XP home and pro computer to avoid ad serving and hitting rogue websites. For the most part, it works - HOWEVER - when I visit some sites, when the site loads the portion (referenced in the HOST file - such as an <IFRAME> which has a banner ad) - the entire page redirects and you do not get the page content but a search page instead.

It's almost like the page discovers you thwarted the banner ad from being served and it makes the page unviewable. THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN W/ FIREFOX - but, with FFox the ads do not get served, so the function is happening properly. I do not know with IE6 because I upgraded my 3 computers all to IE7. Some sites which are problematic are: aimpages.com or (sorry Yahoo!): my.yahoo.com (most of the time, but not all the time w/ the top banner load).

Anyone know how to turn this redirect off from the ad not being served? (And, changing page redirects or IE security, etc makes no difference).

1 Answer

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  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    there is no guarantee from Windows that your hosts file will do anything predictable except for lan stuff....I read this on a popular website (don't remember which one)...basically it uses it sometimes for some things, and ignores it other times...I put this line in my hosts:

    0.0.0.0 google.com

    or something like that, and it did absolutely nothing...not unix-y at all...anyway, sorry this doesn't help, but just a heads up that it might not be you or IE doing this...

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