Hosts and DNS lookup order

For various reasons I need to get a load of devices running Windows Embedded POSReady 2009 (basically XP Embedded) to look at DNS before the hosts file. The entry does have to exist in the hosts file as well to cater for WAN failure. I've tried the only one I can see on the web - changing the values for DNSPriority etc. in HKLM\System\CCS\Services\TCPIP\ServiceProvider and hosts still seems to take priority over DNS lookup.

Any feedback very welcome.

 

Looks as though that tells you how to do it, rather than actually a tool in it. As it happens I may have solved it for my scenario as the devices (tills) are on the same VLAN as the entry I require. I didn't realise it but in the hosts file you can put a name rather than IP address. It appears to be resolving using DNS when it can see the DNS servers and is still resolving (presumably using NetBIOS) when I put a dummy address in the DNS server field. Unfortunately won't be able to fully prove for a couple of weeks.

 

No problem

 

Still no luck

I had a slightly faulty hosts file on the till so what I thought was the resolution didn't work. Changing the values in the registry doesn't work, if you put DNS at, say, 1 and hosts at 500 it still looks up hosts first