IE6 on XP Pro SP2 bypasses hosts file

[Guest]

Microsoft did something misguided in a recent update. I came here to try to
resolve the problem only to find that nobody seems to know what it is.

Internet Explorer is overriding the hosts file when you are online. Now it
only honors the hosts file when you are offline. It is overriding the TCP/IP
services, and going straight to the offending site. Ping, tracert, mail, and
other browsers honor the hosts file.

For me this is a killer because I override all of my web sites with
dev.(domain).ca going to localhost, so I can edit sites. However, if my
computer is ONLINE then I can't access the local server (If it is OFFLINE
then I can't access the database).

Unfortunately, the ONLY work-around I have found so-far is to use another
browser like Firefox. I have been working so hard to avoid that (besides, the
issue I am working on is making png images display properly on IE).

If anyone knows an ACTUAL solution to this, I would appreciate a note at
(e-mail address removed) thanks.

 

[Guest]

Follow-up:
I tracked the problem down. It appears that IE now does some
interresting new checks (including tests for Windows 2003 IIS ) before
honoring the hosts file if you are online. These tests only occur with IE and
they only occur when you are online and only happen if you have
"automatically detect settings" set "on" in Internet
Options->Connections->Lan Settings. It also totally ignores the precidence
settings of hosts/dns/lmhosts etc in the registry.

Strangely, some of the problems seem to be related to the last date I ran
officeupdate! Several "security fixes" to Office (and no other changes) and
the work-around of actually putting dns entries of 127.0.0.1 for the local
dev sites now results in a "500" error coming from somewhere outside the
server.

Turning off "automatically detect settings" fixed all of the problems,
including checking for wpad.dat to determine if it is a valid proxy of the
site.