Windows offline - hosts file ignored

Whenever my Laptop is not connected to a LAN, it completely ignores the hosts
file and I can´t use my local domains. http://www.somename.local/ works great
when I am connected, but as soon as I have no LAN, all I can do is
http://127.0.0.1/somename/, which doesn´t really work out with software that
uses absolute urls, and I have to work on some that do. Surprisingly,
localhost still resolves to 127.0.0.1 - both in browsers and with ping.

When I turn off the dsl modem, results are even stranger:
ping works fine with 127.0.0.1 and local domains (127.0.0.1 as well), but
localhost now has this ip: "::1:".
http requests to local domains (including localhost and 127.0.0.1) take a
while to complete, but they work. at least they did for a few minutes, after
that there was no response at all, not even a timeout.

The laptop came with a pre-installed WinXP home; I added xampp and set up my
domains. I connect using DHCP, no proxy set in internet settings.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Tcpip\Parameters\DataBasePath
is set to %SystemRoot%/windows32/drivers/etc/hosts; same in all other
"ControlSet" sections.

How do I get Windows to use the hosts file whether I am online or not?