Even though some of this material has been covered in another area of this site, I decided to include it here for those who might not have read that item. Those who have read the other item can skip this material and go directly to the new stuff. There is also an article dealing with the host file you might want to check out if you aren't familiar with this security feature. The Host File
You can use SpyBot for quite sometime before discovering the built in system utilities because they aren't available from the default mode. One must first change SpyBot to the advanced mode.
To change to the "Advanced Mode" just click on the "Mode" selection of the top line menu in the upper left corner and to the right of the "File" menu.
Then click "Advanced Mode" on the drop down menu. Before switching to "Advanced Mode", a warning screen appears.
This warning is nothing more than an "Are you sure" prompt, so click yes.
As soon as it gets a "yes" answer to the warning "SpyBot" inserts a vertical menu on the left side. This menu is made up of buttons which expand when clicked, displaying the selections associated with that particular button. When a button is clicked and expands, whichever menu had been expanded now closes, effectively placing four menus in the space of one.
Clicking the "Tools" button displays its menu. Selections are in alphabetic order. Depending on the size of your SpyBot window you may or may not have to use the scroll button to find the "Host File" selection. The top scroll button doesn't appear until after you have scrolled a bit. Menu items exhibit a "mouseover" effect, easing the selection process considerably. If you are not able to find "Host File" on the side menu, then its time to examine the middle section of this SpyBot window.
When the "Tools" menu button is first clicked, the middle section of the window displays a list of tools that can be added or deleted from the menu. Unfortunately this list isn't in alphabetic order so you will have to hunt for the "Host File" listing. When you find it, click on the box next to "Host File". This places a check mark in the box and the Host File tool will now show up in the "Tools" menu.
Here you see the central portion of the SpyBot window after the Host File selection of the left side menu has been clicked. The arrow indicates the controls for adding or removing the SpyBot host file.
The bottom portion of the display shows the sites that have been added to the Host File. When enough have been added a scroll bar appears.
Select (click on) an item in the list and the "remove control" becomes active. This lets you remove items from the Host File if you decide to unblock a particular site.
Although not feature rich, the SpyBot tool provides easy access to the Host File. What's more, if you all ready use SpyBot for catching spyware, with this built in feature there is no need to download a host file manager program or a prepared host file. This allows you to try using a Host File without going to a lot of trouble. If the performance doesn't suit your taste the SpyBot Host File is easily removed using the upper "remove" control.
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