HOSTS File Edit in Windows 7 Not Effective - Pinging URL Still Shows Original IP Address

Alrighty guys, apparently Win7's hosts file is screwy in some way. If you copy the contents of the file and then paste it into a new txt document (Notepad), then go and delete the original hosts file out of Windows\System32\Drivers\etc followed by saving a new copy of hosts (in the etc directory, obviously) then it works.

I had this problem on both my Win 7 desktop as well as my laptop and the copy/delete/save new method worked on both.

I had the same problem and was due to Trend Micro Antivirus. Go to your network device, in the properties (where you can see the IPv4, IPv6, etc.) uncheck the checkbox for "Trend Micro NDIS 6.0 Filter Driver". Wasn't enought deactivating the firewall! If you have installed another antivirus solution check if it's interfering.