Hosts

Is the Hosts file hard-wired to the Windows directory?

It's where Windoze puts it by default,but the one offered by the OS is only a sample thing and really doesn't do anything in it's original form. I was told to rename it when using a more complete/robust host's file so there wouldn't be conflicts(confuse Winders). There was also a debate as to whether or not to change the IP's to end/start(can't remember which)with zero's to stop problems related to browser windows not finishing loading because it was looking for the ad IP...

I "think" there is a registry key somewhere that controls where it lives.
Why move it?

The one Ridgerunr is referring to is Hosts.sam, whereas the actual operational one is just "HOSTS".

Oops,,my bad,,forgot the "sam" extension. although it only stands for "SAMple". Nuther one of those Unix carryovers is the "host"(no extension) file as i understand...

Ridgerunr

Yeah, the choice is either 127.0.0.1 or 0.0.0.0; whichever causes the least grief.

WhitPhil

Yeah, I thought it may be a Shell Folder but it isn't.

Why move it? Oh, provided it wasn't too large I was thinking of having it reside on my Ram Disk which has a save/load image capability. Every bit helps. I have the TIF on the Ram Disk and use backgroung caching of pages. Moving to a cached page in Ram as opposed to disc is very nearly instantaneous.