I used DWS(Destroy Windows Spying) on Win10 and now all Microsoft sites are inaccessible

I used DWS with the promise that it would stop Windows from spying on me but it did so much more than that. I'm blocked out of my business email, my Forza account, my Xbox account, and a hecka lot of other sites that run on Microsoft domains. I'm not sure how to fix this, I'd like to find a way without having to completely reinstall Windows since I don't have any system backups besides Restore snapshots. Is there a way I can fix this? At least unblock Outlook, Forza, and Xbox?

2 Answers

I am not familiar with this particular Software but the way those blockers usually work (ad blockers on android as well) is that they make custom DNS rules in the systems hosts file. The hosts file is always looked up first when a DNS request is made and in your case it most likely says something like:

127.0.0.1 microsoft.com

Which will resolve microsoft.com to localhost making the request fail because there is no webserver on localhost. If you can find it on your system it will most likely include a bunch of hosts where Microsoft sends you data to. You just need to delete the lines with the sites you want to use.

For future people:

who used DWS (Destroy Windows Spying)

1. Open DWS
2. Click plugin
3. Host manager
4. Delete all entries
5. hit apply

this removes all blocks on your localhost file

You may need to disable windows firewall for a bit to test if you blocked IP of microsoft. For me it did ,

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