dns cache or hosts file not updating

I am running windows 98se. When my bank upgraded its webpage and changed its ips I found some of the links on the new web page did not work on my computer but did work on my wifes nearly identical system.

Further investigation reveals if I try to "ping" the new dns's of the banks links, they change back to the obsolete addresses.

I find my hosts file is not updating automatically and if a change it manually, it soon changes back to what it was.


I am running Tweakmaster (an internet settings adjusting and dns chacheing program). This probably has something to do with it, but it is running on both computers has been for a long time, and only one has a problem.

I put a bandaid on the current problem by going in and changeing the hosts file from read only, puting in new values for the banks links and changing it back to read only.

But this does not solve the underlying problem. Dns's or host s are still not updating .

I don't know how this is supposted to work. I don't even know if the hosts file is supposed to be readonly.

Anybody got any ideas?

Thanks

Byron

 

The hosts file isn't usually updated automatically. You usually have to refresh the list with whatever program you used to put them there in the first place. If, however, you do have some sort of program that's supposed to monitor it and somehow refresh it automatically, I still see a problem here.

You say here that you've set the file to read only. If this is the case that would be the reason it doesn't get changed. You have to remove the read only attribute in order to write to it in any way.

 

Hi Pete


The Hosts file is found in the windows folder. Seems to be just a list of sites visited and their DNS. It is a read only file. There also backups of it. I am not sure if it is native to windows or is there because I am running such programs as Tweakmaster and Spybot Search and Destroy.

Maybe this is a red herring. The real problem is a site changed it ips and the dns for a link and my computer wants to insist on going to the old dns for that link which is not even functional anymore.

 

The hosts file is a windows file. It's put there during the windows installation. When you first install windows the file will be empty and it will stay that way until you use a program of some type that caches web addresses. You say Tweakmaster has DNS caching and I would be willing to bet that that's where the entries came from. You'd be best off to just delete everything that's in it and not use the DNS caching feature. The tiny bit of time it saves looking up an address isn't worth the trouble as you can see. If you delete the entries, you'll not have any problem. I'd be willing to bet you don't notice much of a slow down when browsing the web, if any at all. If you do delete the entries, look to see if there's one in there for your antivirus program. If there is, leave it there. I know Norton puts one in there and I believe maybe AVG too. It's there for the email scanning part of the program and is necessary for it to fuction correctly. Have a look at my post at the bottom of this thread. I have explained there a little bit what it is and what it does. If you have any questions, ask.

 

I don't know about Norton and XP. I used to have Norton on Win98 but haven't had it for quite some time now. Perhaps they've changed things in the newer versions. When I had Win98 and Norton it put an entry in the hosts file like this.

127.0.0.1 pop3.norton.antivirus

If I remember correctly, it also set itself up as a proxy server in OE. I believe it changed the outgoing and incoming mail servers for each account to pop3.norton.antivirus so everything had to go through it before getting in or out. I could be wrong about the mail server thing here, but it was something like that. Does it change your mail server in XP?

 

Thanks Pete and Zander. The info on the link was good. I am not currently having a problem as my bandaid fixed it. i just wanted to understand how the thing worked to avoid future problems. I am starting to understand I think