Everything went fine till: "To save without the TXT extension, change the
"Save
As..." to "All Files". I opened Notepad, clicked File-Save As, changed "Save
as file type:" to All Files, labeled File Name: Hosts, clicked Save, and got
another Hosts.txt. What do you spose I'm doing wrong? K.

"Gary S. Terhune" wrote:

"K" wrote in message
...
Something appears to have happened to my Hosts file. The Hosts file
icon in
Windows Explorer has changed to the Windows Media Player icon. When I
click
on it , the Windows Media Player comes up followed by the Error
window.

Open Windows Explorer, go to View menuFolder Options. Click on
Filetypes tab. Look for the entry for HOSTS and delete it.

I deleted the Hosts file (Media Player), opened a Notebook file, and
saved it
in C:Windows as Hosts. It appeared in C:Windows as Hosts.txt.

Becasue the default when you save a file in Notepad is "As TXT file", so
it adds ".txt" to the filename you enter (unless it's already ".txt"--it
doesn't repeat it.) To save without the TXT extension, change the "Save
As..." to "All Files".

Somewhere in my
reading about the Hosts file I think I read that the Hosts file in
C:Windows
does not contain a file extension. When I renamed Hosts.txt to Hosts,
the
icon changed to the Media Player icon. I would like to re-establish my
Hosts
file. Would anyone know if that is possible?

As I intimated above, you managed to associate HOSTS as being a WMP
file. You need to delete the HOSTS entry in Filetypes. Just so you know,
though, this file association glitch doesn't affect the functioning of
the HOSTS file--it only affects what happens when you double-click the
file to read it.

Then of course the next question
is how to build a safe Hosts File? All ideas, suggestions and comments
will
be greatly appreciated. Thanks, K.

Personally, after getting rid of the erroneous Filetype, I'd recommend
you use the MVP HOSTS file from
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm One of the easiest ways to use
that HOSTS file is to get George Geyde's "HOSTS File Manager". You can
find it at the bottom of this page:
http://www.mvps.org/PracticallyNerded/Software.htm

On the former site (the winhelp2002 site) you'll find lots of helpful
documentation. The "HOSTS File Manager" Help section includes a bit
about adding custom sites to the MVPS HOSTS file.

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS MVP Shell/User
http://www.grystmill.com/articles/cleanboot.htm
http://www.grystmill.com/articles/security.htm