Location of the hosts file on Windows

Should you ever need to edit the hosts file on a Microsoft Windows computer, you'll find it in this directory:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc

Well, that's where it should be. If it's not there, you may need to create it.

Hosts file format

Okay, while I'm writing about the hosts file, the format of the lines looks like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost

Or, in my case, as I was working with OpenSSO, which requires fully qualified domain names (FQDN), today it looked like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost foo.bar.com

Now, if you don't happen to know what a hosts file is, don't worry, go read something else, there's nothing to see here, certainly nothing that will make your life any better. :)