Solaris Update Hosts file Without Rebooting

The windows hosts file supports only ip->name mappings, it does not support any other standard DNS record types. See here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727005.aspx#EDAA

I would recommend running a simple dns server in order to do the redirect you are talking about. Try powerdns http://www.powerdns.com/

forgive me if the response is to basic. It is quite unusual that this is not working and it appears you have taken all of the right steps. Something as simple as the hosts file should just work when entries are being added to this file.

Take a look at Microsoft KB article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972034 are there any other uncommented out lines in the hosts file aside from the ip and host to resolve?