On 2 Oct 2002, at 5:32, Hugh Vandervoort wrote:

> When this problem first occurred I deleted my hosts file, with no effect. I
> deleted lmhosts with no effect.
> I'm going to try Netscape later, then reinstall Win 98 if that doesn't work.
> Any other ideas?
> ************************
>
> Try renaming or relocating from c:\windows Lmhost.*  Do a find file for
> host*.*  I had this same problem with Win 98, and the solution for me was
> deleting the LMhost file.  Just to be safe, you should move it from its
> current location or rename it.


  In general, I would not recommend deleting system files without
understanding what they do.

  In specific, the HOSTS.SAM and LMHOSTS.SAM files included with Windows are
SAMple files, showing what the live files HOSTS and LMHOSTS (no extensions!)
should look like IF you need to create them.  Nothing uses these sample
files, and so deleting them cannot have any effect unless, possibly, you are
critically short of space on your hard drive.

  The purpose of the live files, without extensions, is to supply mappings
of names (host names or NetBIOS names) to IP addresses.  In some cases, a
properly-structured file may make DNS unnecessary -- this is probably never
true if you need to talk to the Internet.

  There are also a few useful ticks that can be played with these files, to
block things like spam, pop-ups, and certain kinds of spyware.
  It's certainly *possible* that there is malware out there that functions
by deliberately creating these files with perverted contents.  But I don't
happen to know of any -- I've only ever seen a live file on machines where
some human put one there in the attempt to fix a problem.

David Gillett

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