Hi,

You mean the actual file was missing or just empty?

I know that some security products use the hosts file to redirect malicious sites to 127.0.0.1. Could it be a failed update of some sort......like the file is deleted before getting written back, and the write back fails?

I really have no idea how Windows itself handles the hosts file either.

I do find it strange that malware would want to delete the hosts file anyway......modify it perhaps, but not delete.......that seems a bit too obvious to me???