WIndows 7 Hostfile

If the hosts file entry is bad.

may be if you are using a proxy server for browsing

http://serverfault.com/questions/50934/hosts-file-being-ignored

I presume it's formed the same as the example entries etc?

If it's a TCP/IP application like a web browser then it should use DNS and consult hosts file first. However if it's a NETBT / Netbios application as far as I know then WINS comes into play. is there anything in the lmhosts file?

Are you trying to redirect a connection for some specific reason or are you just adding a bad address to a blacklist - i.e. redirecting to 127.0.0.1 ?

If you give some more details I should be able to help further.

To riff off [alpharom], there could be firewall rules that reroute traffic as well.

I have given up on the host file approach and am using a dns forwarder, but still have another problem.
 I can do a nslookup and the ip resolves correctly and I can also ping the ip address, but when I ping just the host name (as opposed to the ip address) it fail immediately.
Any thoughts....?

Make sure you have a valid DNS server specified and that the DNS server is configured to give you a response for host you're trying to contact.  It may be that the host is not in DNS or that the DNS server doesn't exist or that the DNS server isn't configured to forward resolution requests.

Thanks for Everyones help

"To riff off [alpharom], there could be firewall rules that reroute traffic as well." - me

"Actually my problem is solved now, it turned out to be a firewall issue" - you