No Kidding! That would be awesome! lOl. However, I've never seen it before either but I have a guess.
Probably wrong...BUT...a lot of ads are in Flash these days and maybe something went haywire with your Flash. Try reinstalling your Flash Plugin and see if that helps. You may also consider updating/reinstalling Internet Exploere. !! WARNING !! Make sure you know what you're doing if you choose to reinstall IE. Read up on it first if that's the path you take.
I had a similar problem - it also stopped me viewing maps and other things. I went through the troubleshooting process of going onto internet options and security checking that show pictures was ticked under multimedia.
I also spend a considerable amount of time re-downloading flash player and checking the settings. This solved some of it but not all.
The solution for me came by checking through my antivirus/ad blocking software which was Virgin's PC Guard. When I checked the blocked sites some bonafide sites had been blocked accidently. Although any of the above could have been the solution the main one was the ad blocker.
That host file update is interesting - I am having problems with the CiD adware which neither my adware blocker or spybot can sort. This might be a way of blocking it.
![http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v200/joey84uk/Image1.jpg[/IMG]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v200/joey84uk/Image1.jpg%5B/IMG%5D){kind=link}