Hi.

i am using spybot search and destroy and mvps hosts file.they both added many entries in hosts file.
now my hosts file is too big .it is around 30000 lines. there are many duplicate entries. how i can remove duplicate entries.

i searched but could not find the exact thing i wanted. there are couples of batch files available which remove duplicate entries but only if they are tab limited.

is there any option in some advanced text editor to do this job?

please help.
thanks

Hello,
30,000 lines would be a big job to manually edit.
Looking around, the only programs that claim to remove duplicate host files are registry cleaners.
Do not use these registry cleaners!

http://miekiemoes.blogspot.com/2008/02/reg...weaking_13.html

The way it works is that a good add says it will fix/speed up your computer and the download is free. But in order to fix any thing you have to buy it. And it does not fix any thing, some times causing great harm!

Can you rebuild the host file, as you want it, with out great difficulty? If so consider starting over from scratch.
In the meantime, I will keep looking for a good/real host file cleaner.

Here are a couple of programs that I found.
Use at your own risk!
I do not endorse nor recommend these programs.
I have never used these programs, and do not know any thing about them!

http://www.download.com/Host-File-Checker/...4-10159874.html


http://software.techrepublic.com.com/abstr...px?docid=452729

i was searching about this issue and there was an article that import file into excel and then sort the entries and delete duplicates. i tried to do that but was not successful. another problem is that i have very few entries which are not being redirected to 127.0.0.1.for example

normal entry should look like

127.0.0.1 abc.net

but those few entries are like

abz.net

what does it mean?

thanks

127.0.0.1 is your computer. it is a feedback loop.
As far as the other, I feel that may be malware related and I am not qualified to answer that. (plus I just plain do not know)

As hfcg said, start from the scratch.
Reset host file....
Download HostsXpert ( http://www.majorgeeks.com/Hoster_d4626.html ) and then follow the steps below:

* Unzip HostsXpert.zip
* It will create a folder named HostsXpert in whatever folder you extract it to.
* Run HostsXpert.exe by double clicking on it.
* click Restore MS Hosts File and then click OK.
* Click the X to exit the program

Restart computer.

Get new mvps hosts file.

There were some programmes for XP to find duplicate files. I used to delete music duplicate file I used the programme Clone Remover for such aim. It helped me. And not only for music files. For pictures, music and a lot of others. Now it is more free place on my PC and have no problems with it