Windows keeps a local cache of every domain name it resolves, so repeat visits are faster. That cache is also a useful window into what your computer has been connecting to – and the first thing to clear when a website suddenly resolves to the wrong place.
View the DNS cache
Open Command Prompt (no administrator rights needed to view) and run:
ipconfig /displaydnsEach entry shows the record name, record type (1 = A, 28 = AAAA, 5 = CNAME), time to live in seconds and the answer. To search the long output, pipe it to findstr:
ipconfig /displaydns | findstr /i u0022microsoftu0022In PowerShell the same data is easier to filter:
Get-DnsClientCache | Sort-Object Entry | Format-Table Entry, Type, TimeToLive, Data -AutoSizeClear the DNS cache
Run this from an administrator prompt:
ipconfig /flushdnsWindows confirms with Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache. The next lookup for each site goes to your DNS server again.
When this helps
- A website moved to a new server and you still reach the old one
- You edited the
hostsfile or changed DNS servers - Investigating unexpected connections from a PC
- Clearing your local lookup history for privacy
Check what the world sees
If clearing the cache doesn’t help, the problem may be the DNS record itself. Look it up publicly with the DNS Lookup tool.
Written by
Inder Kochar
Systems & Network Engineer – I write up the fixes I use with clients, tested on real systems. Stuck on something similar?
