Hosts, LMhosts and WINS are very important and you may never use it, but your Windows PC has a little file hidden away in the Windows directory called HOSTS, which you can find in the %windir%\system32\drivers\etc folder. In fact, all operating systems come with a version of this file, including Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS and OS X operating systems.
What are Hosts in Windows 10:
The HOSTS file is used to map hostnames (local network, intranet, or domain names) to specific IP addresses online or on the local network (though perhaps it’s most commonly used to point web sites such as Amazon and Facebook to the IP address 0.0.0.0 so as to make them inaccessible to the user because that address doesn’t point to anything).
The HOSTS file is not commonly used on modern PCs and computing devices, as the Domain Name System (DNS) takes care of name resolution, which is the mapping of hostnames to IP addresses on the Internet and your local networks.
Where is HOST FILE Located in windows 10:
Host file in windows 10 is located in system32 drivers etc folder and host file location path is -> C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts.
What are LMHOSTS in Windows 10
Windows PCs also come with a file in the same directory as HOSTS, called LMHOSTS (LAN Manager Hosts) and Windows PCs can also use a service called Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) to resolve Network Basic Input/Output System (NetBIOS) names to IP addresses.
Where is LMHOST file located in windows 10:
LMHOST file will be located in system root folder in windows 32 folder and LMhost file path is -> %SystemRoot%\System32\drivers\etc folder is the location of LMHOST file.
What are WINS in Windows 10:
WINS was Microsoft’s own alternative to DNS and is now used by only a few very old legacy applications and systems. You shouldn’t be using WINS on your PCs unless you still have machines running Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows Me on your network (and why would you want to do that?) as these systems will still need the NetBIOS system to find domain controllers and other computers on LAN networks. NetBIOS differs from the fully qualified domain names (FQDNs) that DNS and HOSTS use by allowing only 15-character computer names with no domain name component
On modern PCs, FQDNs are used for this job instead, but if you think you may have NetBIOS devices on your network or applications on your PC, you can monitor your network for traffic on UDP port 137, which is the port that WINS uses for the NetBIOS service.
WINS exists in Windows today only to enable backward compatibility with older systems. Should you find that you do need to configure WINS, Microsoft has a technical reference online, which you can find at http://pcs.tv/2eRhWdn, and the LMHOSTS file contains instructions on how you can use it to create mappings of IP addresses to NetBIOS names.
Difference between HOSTS vs LMHosts?
Host file in windows 10 will lets you to map an IP Address to an host name and whereas LMhost file are LAN manager files and allows you to remote server used by netbios(computer name) when attempting to use .net framework.
Hosts files are used to map hostnames to a specific ip address online or local network.
LMHOST files contains the mapping of IP Address to computer names (NetBios) names.
Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) is a legacy computer name registration and resolution service that maps computer NetBIOS names to IP addresses.