It's worth noting that I sorted the problem by doing a complete re-install, but just wanted to confirm the above would give me a quicker fix, should it happen again.

Hi

If you worked with a IP addres instead of a DNS name you change that in the file /conf/_basic_config.php

Go to the line where you have to specify the Base url and enter your new IP addres.

I did actually try that, but it still kept on re-directing to the older IP address, and inevitably failing. At that point I was assuming the original IP had been registered elsewhere too, but I hadn't been able to locate it. In reality, it's not a b2evo issues, but one of the way I've got my VM set up. I'm still working my way through understanding that, but in the meantime I've learned my way around getting things running as need be. As I said above though, this is just for evaluation purposes and isn't causing me any real issues - I'm just thinking out loud really.

@chris_of_arabia if you set the URL of the default blog (or any other) to "Absolute URL" (http://b2evolution.net/man/blog-url-settings), your site will keep trying to redirect you to that URL, even after changing the value of $baseurl defined at the file _base_config.php. So, you need to logging into the back-office and fix it accordingly. If it's impossible to access the site, then you will need to change this value directly in the database.(table: [evo_]blogs - field: blog_siteurl).

Another advice, redirections are aggressively cached by browsers, so you should clear cache just to be sure.