How to use StevenBlack hosts in Win11 without killing DNSClient Service

[PaulTGG]

Hi,
Has anyone found a way to reliably use the hosts file on an up-to-date version of Windows 11? The hosts file is so large (which is good) that it grinds the DNS Client service to a halt (which is bad), and if you disable the DNS Client service (which used to be good), Windows doesn't even try to fall back on an external DNS server (bad). Is there some other way to use the hosts file that doesn't kill Win11 networking? Maybe a third-party firewall or local DNS server, or something like that?

[Lateralus138]

Hello @PaulTGG, yes, the two methods as suggested in the README here are to disable the DNS Cache service (I do not recommend as it disables things like WSL) OR to compress the HOSTS file (the recommended method) which combines multiple URLs into single IP lines (up to 9 per line).

The pertinent excerpt in the README:

Disabling the DNS Cache Service can cause issues with services and applications like WSL and it's possible to compress the hosts file and negate the need to disable the DNS caching service. You can try the C++ Windows command line tool at Hosts Compress - Windows (the recommended method) or the PowerShell compression script and check out the guide located at the Hosts Compression Scripts repository.

I am the author of the aforementioned command line software Hosts Compress - Windows and more information/instructions can be found at my repository linked above (I recommend the actual program and not the scripts as it is exponentially faster). This has been tested on both Windows 10 and 11 and should completely stop any slow downs/connectivity issues.

[PaulTGG]

@Lateralus138 Thanks! I took a quick look and didn't see the scripts in the repo (except for the build script), but that's awesome!

I also did a quick test with Unbound, which works, and in some ways is nice, since it doesn't need to work around Windows' self-imposed limitations, but it requires reformatting the hosts file into a style that Unbound can make sense of, which would probably be a pain on Windows? (Although, in case anyone's interested, here's how easy it is to do on Linux/BSD... XD)
cat [inputfile] | /usr/bin/grep '^0\.0\.0\.0' | /usr/bin/awk '{print "local-zone: \""$2"\" redirect\nlocal-data: \""$2". A 0.0.0.0\""}' >> [outputfile]

[Lateralus138]

@PaulTGG

I took a quick look and didn't see the scripts in the repo (except for the build script), but that's awesome!

Sorry for the confusion, there are 2 links above, the 1st is to my C++ compiled program:

https://github.com/Lateralus138/hosts-compress-windows

and the second is to the old Powershell (script) version which I do not recommend, but are there for people if they want to use it. I recommend the 1st link which has compiled executables in the Release section:

https://github.com/Lateralus138/hosts-compress-windows/releases

I am unsure about Unbound as I do everything manually (or by my own software/scripts).