Hosts file changes are not recognized in windows 8

Question

When i make changes to the hosts file in windows 8, it doesn't work. Although my changes stay in the hosts file.

What I'm trying to, is to redirect the domainname riddergarn.dev to 127.0.0.1 with this line:

127.0.0.1 riddergarn.dev

I use avast! and Windows Defender is disabled, so that's not causing the problem. I have tried "ipconfig /flushdns" in CMD, but it doesn't solve it either.

I have tried searching for the answer on various sites, but with no luck so far. Maybe someone could help me out.

EDIT: Disabling avast! did not not solve the problem.

My hosts file (example.com doesn't resolve to 127.0.0.1 either):

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
127.0.0.1       localhost
#   ::1             localhost
127.0.0.1       riddergarn.dev
127.0.0.1       example.com

My %SYSTEMROOT% is C:\Windows

I dont use IIS, but Apache instead.

When i try to ping the domain i get the following:

C:\Users\Andreas>ping riddergarn.dev
Ping request could not find host riddergarn.dev. Please check the name and try a
gain.

Answer 1

Are you using Internet Explorer? In my experience you need to restart the IE for hosts changes to be recognised (other browsers will pick up changes straight away).