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.

Usefulness of Blogs

Blogs draw parallel to the personal diaries some of us keep. And recently, I realized the benefits of keeping my blog updated with technical workarounds that I have discovered and shared with you.

After reinstalling Microsoft Vista on my notebook just a few days earlier, I found to my dismay, that I had not backed up my hosts file. I had previously modified the file to point to a website I frequented but have had many DNS timeouts. If you use Vista, you can empathize the pain of modifying system files on this OS. Thankfully, I had blogged about this earlier and was able to rectify my problem.

Good reason to blog?

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.

Sweet!

Maung Maung has posted his demo codes for his Windows Workflow Foundation session during LOVE 2007. Cool! His talk was very concise and provided a very good introduction to WF. I can't wait to get started on the demos. And oh, he provided additional learning links, so do check them out.

While on the topic of workflows, I'd like to highlight that this year's Grid Asia event will feature a tutorial on Taverna. There's also a tutorial on OWL that you can attend together with Taverna.