Block a website on Home PC

[Imagine]

Is it possible to block a website from a Home computer? What I mean, is when someone would type in the address (eg. www.Google.com) either a message would pop up, saying connection refused, or a page would be displayed showing 'This page has been deemed inappropriate' or something like that? I've seen NetNanny, but would really appreciate a free version, to block sites that I could specify. Thanks everyone, appreciate it

[tomd]

If you are using internet explorer, there is a content filter built in with specific handling for individual sites. Go Tools > Internet Options > Content (Tab), then click under "Content Advisor" click Enable. Then you can set overall ratings, or leave the internet unfiltered if you wish. Under "Approved Sites" you can indentify a specific site and Always or Never allow access to it.

[Oneeyedvic]

If you buy a router, you can then block individual IP addresses.

[OBonio]

Or, you could edit the hosts file on the computer and put in all the addresses you want to block with an IP of 127.0.0.1.  For example :

127.0.0.1          www.google.com

The hosts file can be found in c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc

You may need to do an ipconfig /flushdns from a command prompt aswell to get it working.

[Imagine]

Thank you very much for the replies everyone, especially OBonio , as your one is by far the easiest to use. I do not use Internet Explorer (Firefox > all others!), so tomd's reply couldn't help me. Also, I do have a router, but I couldn't figure out where to type in the IP's of the website to block. I put them in a random window after a while, but nothing seems to have happened. Then OBonio's response was perfect, works for both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Cheers everyone!

[OBonio]

Glad I could help :o)