HOSTS file doesn’t appear to be working on one of several W11 machines

Topic

[WSrlhess]

My main storage is a 36 TB RAID 6 QNAP NAS.

I have long ago learned to avoid using Windows Network Discovery and place all the machine’s names and IP addresses in my HOSTS file.

An example line is (of a now obsolete machine):
192.168.1.136         Mail        #PRE

There are three W11 machines that I use: Mail, Studio, and Office plus the NAS. The network is wired 2.5 GBE.

I need to access files on some of the machines from other machines for a variety of reasons, including the fact that the rights of my mail account on the mail machine are more restricted so that a virus that might land on that machine could do less damage.

My problem is that on the Mail machine (a 2011 machine bought as W10 and upgraded–it met all of the requirements) is the only machine that intermittently refuses to respond to the NAS name, despite having the NAS listed in its HOSTS file (similar to above).

Sometimes in 20-30 seconds File Explorer will be able to access the NAS after telling me it can’t be found. I usually just give up and type the IP address into the address bar and it works instantly.

On the two other (born W11) machines (Studio and Office), the NAS snaps right up when I address it by name, as it does on the Mail machine when it’s working.

I have looked at many things, but I’d like some suggestions as where to look. I’m still frustrated. I just checked the MAIL machine and it has my standard HOSTS file (which is actually called “hosts”) in the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc folder. There is a hosts.ics file which provides an alternate address for the MAIL machine and that files says:

#Copyright (c) 1993-2001 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This file has been automatically generated for use by Microsoft Internet
# Connection Sharing. It contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names
# for the home network. Please do not make changes to the HOSTS.ICS file.
# Any changes may result in a loss of connectivity between machines on the
# local network.

172.17.192.1 MAIL.mshome.net # 2030 1 6 12 9 32 33 530

This address doesn’t make sense and I don’t understand it.

Its timestamp is the last boot of this machine in the early morning today (I reboot it daily).

My other two W11 machines (Office and Studio) do NOT have this file, but I’m afraid to delete it as I am using OneDrive and that seems fragile (unlike DropBox).

So what to do?

Thanks!

Richard

• This topic was modified 4 months, 1 week ago by WSrlhess.

Replies

Why do you have ICS on the mail machine? I haven’t seen that in use since the days of dial-up!

Does that machine have 2 network cards?

cheers, Paul

1 user thanked author for this post.

WSrlhess

Hi, Paul, I deleted the hosts.ics file and it was rebuilt upon the next boot with the comment telling me not to modify it. But there was one line in the old file that was preserving a previous name for the Mail machine and that did not reappear. I’ll have to wait and see if I have continued access to the NAS. I have it now, but it sometimes seems to just go away–usually when I’m in a hurry, of course.

Thanks for giving me courage to ignore the “do not modify” warning in the hosts.ics file…at least one line of that file is gone (I did not reproduce the line in the above quote of the file because it was just a leftover).

Cheers,

Richard

Recreation on reboot suggest Windows thinks it has 2 networks and is routing between the 2.
What does running this command in a Command Prompt window show: ipconfig /all

cheers, Paul

1 user thanked author for this post.

WSrlhess

Well, that was a good call. I have three network adapters on the computer
An Intel wireless AC9260 which was disabled in device manager
A RealTek PCIe GbE controller which was not disabled, but I disabled it and rebooted
A RealTek Gaming [not what I use it for] 2.5 GbE controller which is what I use.

The hosts.ics was regenerated on boot after disabling the GbE controller.

But with deleting the rogue line yesterday, the problem seems to have gone away.

I think I’m going to mark it RESOLVED. Thank you! I’ll remove the RESOLVED flag or start a new thread if this still bothers me. It hasn’t bothered me since I removed the rogue line in the hosts.ics file.

Cheers,

Richard