map hostname to specific ip (hosts file)

I want to point a specific ip to an host(10.0.5.12 dire.direorg.com). So instead of going out to look on the net it would point to an internal ip that is my server. Like what a host file would do, but I don't want to have to go to every single computer and manually edit this file. Could I use a GPO? Any suggestions?

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Comments

dynamik

Don't you have DNS running?

Netstudent

If thats really what you want to do, then maybe your best bet would be a quick batch file. Something that did

cd c:/windows/system32/drivers/etc
copy \\server\host_files\hosts /y

for each user, where server could be a location that houses the desired host file. Maybe you could make it a logon script. Not sure if that helps but maybe you can research it a little. Not sure about a GPO setting, there are way too many objects to know them all.

JDMurray

Do you have the capability of automatically pushing a HOSTS file update to every workstation?

Zoomer

I made a script to copy and paste a host file that I stored on a shared folder and it seemed to work.

JDMurray

Under XP and Vista, an updated HOSTS file is immediately detected and loaded, but I seem to remember Windows 2000 requiring a reboot to re-read an updated HOSTS file.

Mishra

dynamik wrote:

Don't you have DNS running?

Yes, why aren't you doing this through DNS?