Thread: Block a Website of your choice

Some times it becomes necessary to block a website on our Computers for one or other reason. You can easily and effectivily block access to a website by adding it to your Windows HOSTS file. Once the website is blocked in the HOSTS file, it will not appear in any of the browsers. That is, the website becomes completely unavailable.

1. Go to your HOSTS file which is located at:

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC for Vista and XP
C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC for Win 2000
C:\WINDOWS for Windows 98 and ME

2. Open HOSTS with Notepad.

The default Windows HOSTS looks like this:
______________________

# Copyright © 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a “#” symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host
#
127.0.0.1 localhost
_____________________________

3. Directly under the line that says 127.0.0.1 Localhost, you will want to type:

127.0.0.1 name of the URL you want to block

For example to block the website google.com, simply type:

127.0.0.1 google.com
127.0.0.1 Google
Other parts of google could be blocked in a similar way:

127.0.0.1 search.google.com
127.0.0.1 profile.google.com
etc etc etc…
It is necessary to add a website with and without the “www.”. You can add any number of websites to this list.

4. Close Notepad and answer “Yes” when prompted.

5. After blocking the website, test it in any of the browser. If every thing is done as said above,the website must not appear in any of the web browsers. You should see a Cannot find server or DNS Error saying: “The page cannot be displayed”.

Some people suggest that your add a website to the Internet Explorer ‘Privacy’ settings. This does not block a site. It only stops that site from using cookies.

Good post.
However one thing to note is not to save the edited file as a text file.
Choose Save as Type as "All files"....

Good one Naren.

Great post..........

Thanks for the useful information.

Welcome all. Thanks dilip