I have a virtual machine image (using Virtual PC) of Windows XP/IE6 from Microsoft's "modern IE" website. This virtual machine is hosted by a Windows 7 machine.
I have a local web application on the host machine and need to check it in IE6 (sadly). Inside the virtual machine, can the "localhost" name be mapped to point to the IP of the host machine? I tried editing the c:/windows/system32/drivers/etc/hosts file in the virtual machine to [IP address of host machine] localhost but that doesn't work. The reason I want to use "localhost" rather than an IP is because some of the web application's configuration files point to "localhost."
I can change the configuration files to point to a different domain name, but I wanted to know if the "localhost" name itself can point to something else. I get the feeling that "localhost" is some type of reserved keyword that only points to 127.0.0.1.