This is odd. I have been deleting and replacing my Blue Tack HOSTS file for months, no problems. I last did it successfully on 22-Jun-06.

But now, when I try to delete the old one, I get, "Access denied. Make sure the disk is not write protected or full."

As far as I know, I have not done anything any differently. I am using the Administrator account and only the A(rchive) attribute is set.

What happened? How do I fix it?

Thanks,
Tim

PS - My OS is Win XP Home SP2

Well, I have worked around the problem by restarting Windows in "safe mode with command prompt". There, I was able to delete the old HOSTS file and rename the new HOSTS.txt to HOSTS.

However, I am still concerned as to what has changed. As I said, I have been exchanging Blue Tack HOSTS files for a long time and I have never encountered anything like this, before.

I updated and ran Spybot Search and Destroy and AdAware, but nothing was found by either. My anti-virus defs are updated, regularly.

I am bamboozled.

Tim

It is possible it was being used by a program still when you tried to delete it. The error you encountered is a common error message for such a situation. If you encounter it again, you can get around going into safe mode by using programs that "detach" any programs that may be using a file you want to modify/delete such as the one in this thread that is freely available:

http://www.bluetack.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=10760

Don't be: the problem is caused by a bug in the latest version of ZoneAlarm.
Here's the workaround:
Open ZoneAlarm > Firewall > Advanced
Place a check in check the "lock host file check box"
Click Ok

Now reverse the steps and uncheck the "lock host file"
Click Ok

Now you should be able to delete or update the HOSTS file ...

Note: this is temporary because next time ZoneAlarm starts up with a
Windows restart, checkbox is unchecked but the hosts file is locked again.

Thanks for sharing that information with us driesie.

I'll hope the peeps at Zonealarm will fix that issue ...

Cheers for that driesie

Worked fine for me, after having this problem.

Thank you!

Tim

Topic Pinned now thanks to driesie

Maybe I'm paranoic but I think it's an intentional bug to fight who wants to stop ZA phoning home.