How do I Flush DNS?
- Date added:
- Sunday, 22 February 2009
- Last revised:
- Sunday, 22 February 2009
Answer
Most DNS clients cache the results of name resolution requests. This speeds up name resolution if multiple lookups are done to the same address, such as is common when browsing the web.
Sometimes a bad DNS entry will be cached and you will need to either flush the DNS cache to get rid of it, or wait up to 24 hours for it to be dropped from the cache automatically.
How to Flush DNS in Microsoft Windows
In Microsoft Windows, you can use the command ipconfig /flushdns to flush the DNS resolver cache:
C:\>ipconfig /flushdns
Windows IP Configuration
Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.
You can also use the command ipconfig /displaydns to view the DNS resolver cache.
Turning off DNS Caching under Microsoft Windows
If you experience frequent issues with DNS caching under Microsoft Windows, you can disable client-side DNS caching with either of these two commands:
net stop dnscache
sc servername stop dnscache
This will disable DNS caching until the next reboot. To make the change permanent, use the Service Controller tool or the Services tool to set the DNS Client service startup type to Disabled.