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At work in my university, the computers in the office all use Windows XP, latest service pack. They've given each one of us a regular account, with no way of installing programs or making system-relevant changes. They have blocked many websites (YouTube, proxy sites, Facebook, etc.) simply by adding an entry for each one of them in hosts file, such as
127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.metacafe.com
127.0.0.1 metacafe.com
etc.
If I could simply tell Google Chrome to use a hosts file stored somewhere else then that would be it. I did read question 343158, but I can't set an HTTP server because of limited privileges on the machine.
As I could notice after reading the first answer, I needed to further detail my question, so here it goes: I have already circumvented DNS blocking in the past (the usual way) by first checking the IP address of a certain website at pages like this one and then I added the corresponding entry to the hosts file on my own computer, much like the following
92.123.66.131 www.metacafe.com
72.32.120.222 metacafe.com
and it has always worked for me thus far. For any site. However, this is a different case: I don't have write access to the hosts file, I can't install software, and I can't do pretty much anything that bears significance. I installed the portable version of Google Chrome because the computer only had IE, so I am looking for a way to make Google Chrome read a hosts file from a custom location, so I could build my own file (or perhaps copy the one I have on my laptop) and browse on top of that one.
2You may have read the question, but you didn't read my answer. Nowhere did I specify that the HTTP proxy has to be installed and running on the same machine as the WWW browser. (I myself have single HTTP proxies serving entire LANs.) On the gripping hand, I recommend not trying to evade administrative restrictions for preventing non-work use on machines that you don't own, and not setting up or using promiscuous proxy HTTP servers outwith your LAN and accessible to the public. – JdeBP – 2012-02-10T12:51:10.157