SharePoint Search Service cannot find hosts file

I have been trying out various scenarios on a dev farm consisting of 2 SharePoint servers and a SQL box to see what happens...

If you start mucking around with search services and stop or change your search index server you may come accross the following error:

Application Server Administration job failed for service instance Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance Reason: Could not find file 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\HOSTS'.

This is because the Sharepoint Timer job deletes the hosts file after you modify the web front end the crawler is pointed to. I created a new hosts file in 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\' and then came across the next error:

Application Server Administration job failed for service instance Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchServiceInstance Reason: Access to the path 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\HOSTS' is denied.

To solve this update the permissions on the 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc' directory for the WSS_Admin_WPG account allowing the following advanced permissions:

• Traverse Folder / Execute File
• List Folder / Read Data
• Read Attributes
• Read Extended Attributes
• Create Files / Write Data
• Read Permissions
• Delete Permissions

The delete permission also needs to be given because the timer job actually deletes and recreates the hosts file.