Thought i’d share this with everyone, I recently ran into some trouble on my machine where my browsers began ignoring my Hosts file. After much annoying testing and what not I eventually found that the reason they were ignoring my hosts file was because it was going through a proxy.

I’ve never set a proxy up on my computer, but recently I installed Google Web Accelerator. Bingo they set up a proxy to speed up the sites you view.

So uninstall that if you have it and Bob’s your uncle. A normal Add/Remove Programs on XP does the trick.

If it doesn’t help check if you are using a proxy to connect, if not check your spelling in your hosts file.