Making it easier to change your hosts file on Vista

I many people are having problems editing their hosts file on Microsoft Vista. So I have written a simple application that helps you launch a notepad with the necessary elevated rights to edit your hosts file. Please download the installer from here. Or if you prefer, you may wish to inspect the source code and build the binaries yourself.

It isn't rocket science. The console application simply forks a process to execute notepad with elevated rights to edit your hosts file. This issue arises because of the new security features built into Vista (User Access Control or UAC). There is a manifest file that specifies that the application requires administrative rights.

Hope it's useful to you.

How to change your hosts file in Vista

Secure, but good! If you ever wondered how to add manual entries to your hosts file, here's the solution.

I've been stumped for months and this certainly comes as a relief.

Update: I have written a tiny programme to make editing your hosts file a little more convenient. Here it is.