Network problems encountered include: web browsers crashing, websites not loading, yield symbol appearing over the notification area's WiFi or Ethernet icon, "No Internet, secured", etc.
Solution: disable DNS Client by changing the value data for HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\Dnscache\Start from 2 (automatic) to 4 (disabled) (recent versions of Windows 10 no longer allow disabling DNS Client via services.msc).
References and more information:
An alternative (albeit less performant) method is to compress the hosts file.
Disabling the Windows "DNS Client" service - Windows 2000 and later have a "DNS Client" service which is enabled by default. This service caches DNS lookups for the local computer only. This potentially saves a bit of bandwidth and makes DNS lookups a bit faster by preventing DNS lookups from being sent over the Internet connection if the same data has recently been requested on this same computer.
StevenBlack/hosts: Extending and consolidating hosts files - Extending and consolidating hosts files from several well-curated sources like adaway.org, mvps.org, malwaredomainlist.com, someonewhocares.org, and potentially others. You can optionally invoke extensions to block additional sites by category.
Check any downloaded hosts files for nefarious entries with this oneliner: grep -v '#' hosts_file | awk '{print $1}'| sort | uniq -c
If you are using hosts to block malicious sites, Quad9 may also interest you: New "Quad9" DNS service blocks malicious domains for everyone
How to troubleshoot a Windows 10 service which does not let me stop it
Anyone knows how to disable the DNS Client service on the Fall Creators Update?
/windows | Sep 30, 2018