Clearing List Of Hosts In System Info

scott1

I have BD AV 2009 running on Windows XP SP3.

In the main window of BD under the System Info tab in the General button there is a list of 11,619 Hosts.

This is what it says in the Selected Item Description box:

"IP addresses associated with Fully Qualified Domain Names. These are useful at startup, or when your computer cannot find a domain server.

Location: the {WINDOWS\SYSTEM32}\drivers\etc\host file"

My question: Are these urls harmful? Is there any way to clear this list? I followed the above path but didn't find that file.

There were 3 that had similar names:

hosts (331kb)

hosts 20091001-141636.backup (1kb)

Imhosts.sam (4kb)

Alex Stanciu

Hello scott1,

The "hosts" file that you are referring to is located here:C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc . It is a file which does not have an extension but you have the possibility to open it with Notepad .The "hosts" file gives you the possibility to block different banners, cookies or to have access to some websites when you normally cannot do this. More details on how to use this file can be found on the Microsoft website or on different websites.

The System Info section of the BitDefender General module gives you the possibility to view, from a single location, all system settings and the applications registered to run at startup. It is not normal to have 11,619 Hosts and that is why you need to follow the steps bellow :

1. Open BitDefender and under the General module click on the System Info tab .

2. Click on Hosts, then click on the Go to button from the right .

3. The hosts file should open . You will have to delete all the entries that you will find there except for the "127.0.0.1 localhost" address and the text from the beginning of the file .

4. After that click on File from the upper left side and choose Save .

Let us know if you have the same issue after that .

Thank you .

Emile

Hello Alex,

I need to delete some entries due to conflits with the new Windows Live messenger. I followed your suggestion but when I "save" I receive an error popup

Any recommendations?

Thanks in advance

Emile

Hello,

I found that my "hosts" file was read only, I changed this and I haved saved.