How to clear your DNS Cache on Windows PCs

Troubles loading a website or pining an online service by its domain name? Chances are you probably need to clear out your DNS cache. When you're trying to load a specific website or when your networking tools like "ping" and "nslookup" are showing the wrong destination IP, there is a good chance that your local dns is having an issue. We'll show you how resolve DNS issues in this step by step tutorial.

There are a few different ways to clear out your DNS cache. In this guide we'll walk you through three different ways to do so. These steps can be used in both Windows 10 and Windows 11.

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Using CMD to Clear your DNS Cache

1. Click on the Start icon
   

2. Type in Command Prompt - right click and select Run as Administrator
   

3. In the command prompt terminal type the following command and press enter:

                  ipconfig /flushdns

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Using your Browser to Clear your DNS Cache

Most common browsers, such as Edge, Chrome and Firefox, give you the option to clear out your DNS Cache. To do so, follow the following steps:

1. Open up Edge or Chrome
   

2. Type the following command: edge://net-internals/#dns into the address bar
   

3. On the DNS Tab - press the Clear Host Cache button next to the host resolver cache

the edge:// portion of the line is interchangeable with chrome

For Firefox users the following is how you would go about clearing your DNS in the broswer

1. Open up Firefox
   

2. Type the following command: about:networking#dns into the address bar
   

3. On the DNS tab - press the Clear DNS Cache button

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Using PowerShell to clear out your DNS Cache

To clear our your DNS records using power shell follow the following steps:

1. Click on the Start icon
   

2. Type in PowerShell- right click and select Run as Administrator

   
   

3. In the PowerShell terminal type the following command and press enter:
   

   Clear-DnsClientCache