Dose this help explain what is happening.

Somewhere in all that is says that the hosts file is loaded when the DNS Client starts. Tells me that no DNS Client = no hosts file. Not that that will fix the problem but it clears up one thing.

There is a lot more in there but some of it is in geek. Heck its all in geek. What really bothers me is that I'm beginning to understand a limited amount of it.

Glenn

edit: PS. Is there any way to load the hosts file into the resolver cache outside of starting the DNS Client? Seems to me there should be some kind of command that can be invoked on startup to do this.