HOSTS and dialing-in

[maruli]

my hosts-file of about 300 KB contains, what Spybot had written into, and worked fine, even with my own additions, until due to bad sectors I had to mirror my whole system unto a new harddisk and repair a few things.

I have windows 2000, I have checked it for viruses with an uptodate version of antivir, the actual version of zonealarm, and neither spybot nor hijackthis have found anything.

As long as I deactivate hosts by renaming, I can log in to the internet without any trouble. As soon as I reactivate hosts and dial-in via an analog modem, my system freezes for several minutes. The message on dialing in, that the computer is going to be registered in the network last very long. When I am finally connected, I can acces the internet, but a bit slower than normal. When I deconnect, the computer freezes again for some minutes.

The hosts file is not locked, neither in spybot nor in zonealarm, I am using a newer version, not the one with the bug, that locks hosts without showing it.

Why is this, anybody any idea?

[md usa spybot fan]

From Bleeping Computer Tutorials:
The Hosts File and what it can do for you
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial51.html

NOTE: It is important to note that there have been complaints of system slowdowns when using a large hosts file. This is usually fixed by turning off and disabling the DNS Client in your Services control panel under Administrative Tools. The DNS client caches previous DNS requests in memory to supposedly speed this process up, but it also reads the entire HOSTS file into that cache as well which can cause a slowdown. This service is unnecessary and can be disabled.
ps: I have never tried this.

pps: I personally prefer the default font for readability.

[maruli]

Thanks very much. That was exactly my problem and I have fixed it.

[md usa spybot fan]

You're welcome, but I still prefer the default font.