4 ms·

Programmers should never put DLLs in those folders... Or even ever touch them.

• mastax 5y ago
  Except for \Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts, of course.
  • jaywalk 5y ago
    I occasionally try to search for the reasoning behind the location of the hosts file in Windows, and I always come up blank.
    • blincoln 5y ago
      Maybe it's from back before Windows had a built-in TCP/IP stack? If it were a third-party/optional driver, having files related to it in a path under system32\drivers would make sense.
      • mjevans 5y ago
        Back around Win 95 when they added networking it was based off of (IIRC) BSD's TCP stack and related tools. They were an optional 'third party' driver of sorts, but shipped by the first party. I'm not positive about WinNT or Win3.11 (for workgroups?)
        • mixmastamyk 5y ago
          I remember adding "trumpet winsock" to Win 3.x back in the day. Says '94 for that, and summer of '93 for NT 3.1 debut: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trumpet_Winsock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trumpet_Winsock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.1
    • HideousKojima 5y ago
      They originally copied BSD's network stack, IIRC
    • jve 5y ago
      https://superuser.com/questions/355297/why-does-windows-have-a-unix-style-etc-hosts https://superuser.com/questions/355297/why-does-windows-have...