Timothy C. Hain, MD

This is an old picture of Dr. Hain when he had brown hair. Professor of Neurology, Otolaryngology, and Physical Therapy/Human Movement Science, Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago IL, USA.

EMAIL ADDRESS: t-hain@northwestern.edu

This space holds helpful information about software and hardware and vendors that Dr. Hain has discovered by trial and error. Perhaps if enough of us do this, searches on these devices or companies will bring up more relevant information.

Main Rants/Raves page

Ad blocking using hosts file on Windows --

6/9/07, 1-31-08

Few people seem to realize that you can block most banner ads by making a very simple change to your Windows configuration. The "hosts" file, usually located at:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\

Can be configured to deep-six certain internet addresses that are used to serve up ads. The hosts file was intended to speed up internet browsing by caching the numerical IP addresses for commonly browsed sites.

The trick involves editing this file and putting in a bogus IP address ( 127.0.0.1.). What this does is to quickly abort all attempts to download anything from the listed sites. It is best to download a list of banner ad sites from an online collection.

Details about how to do this is: http://www.allthingsmarked.com/2006/08/28/howto-block-websites-using-the-hosts-file/

One collection is at: http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

I have mixed feelings about this -- while it does work very well to block most ads, it also sometimes blocks useful material too.