I have a 64bit Server 2008.I'm making an entry in thec:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file:-pinkelephant 192.168.100.100then try pinging pinkelephant.it resolves to pinkelephant.co.uk (which bizarrely someone has created)What am I missing?Anthony Jones - MVP ASP/ASP.NET

Hello, Can you try disabling the Dns Client service and check it??Thanks Syed Khairuddin

Thanks for the reply. I've been playing around and I've discovered that this situation exists only while I have a VPN up. When I closed the VPN connection things started working as expected.I still don't understand, why would having a VPN connected affect whether HOSTS file is used?Stopping the DNS Client didn't have any affect.Anthony Jones - MVP ASP/ASP.NET

Hi Anthony, For further research, could you please refer to the following steps to test? 1. Run the following commands to display DNS client resolver cache content with and without VPN connection. Do they have any difference? Ipconfig /displaydns 2. run "ipconfig /flushdns" first and then add the entry into the hosts file, afterwards you may run "ipconfig /displaydns" to check if the entry in the host is loaded. 3. Do you use any third party VPN client? If so, please use Microsoft default VPN client to test.4. If possible, you may post the corresponding test result here for the further research.Thanks for the co-operation.David Shen - MSFT