Your WhatsApp, your downloads and half your websites work fine — then one page refuses with ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED. The internet is not down. Your PC simply cannot turn that website name into an address, and this guide fixes exactly that, in the right order.
Every website has two identities: a name you type, like example.com, and a numeric IP address your PC actually connects to. DNS is the phone book that converts the name into the number. ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED means the phone book lookup failed — the browser asked for the name and got no usable answer back. Your line, your WiFi and the website itself can all be perfectly healthy while this one step is broken. That is why the fix is not restart everything and hope. It is a short chain of tests, each one ruling out a layer: the browser, the Windows DNS cache, the hosts file, the DNS server, and finally the router. Work through the cards below in order and stop at the one that fixes it.
example.com's server IP address could not be found.
ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED
Before changing anything, run the ten-second proof. Open Command Prompt and try both commands:
ping 8.8.8.8 — if replies come back, your internet line and network are aliveping example.com — replace it with the failing site; if this says the host could not be found while the number worked, the fault is name resolution onlyThat split matters. A dead line needs a different repair entirely, and no DNS fix will help it. But if numbers answer and names do not, everything on this page is aimed at your exact problem.
Now open three or four other well-known websites. The answer divides this error into two completely different diseases:
Technicians lose hours by applying every-site fixes to a one-site problem. Decide which patient you have first.
Chrome keeps its own small DNS memory on top of Windows. Fully close Chrome — every window — and reopen it, or restart the PC, which clears both caches at once. This is not a ritual step: a surprising share of these errors are one bad answer cached for a few minutes, and a clean restart is the honest cure.
While you are here, type the address again slowly. A single wrong letter creates a name that truly does not exist, and DNS correctly reports it as unresolvable. Also try the same site in a second browser like Edge. If Edge opens it, your network DNS is innocent and the fault lives inside Chrome — its secure DNS setting is the prime suspect, covered in its own guide in this series.
Windows saves recent lookups in the DNS resolver cache, including failed ones. A site that hiccuped once can keep failing on your PC after it has recovered everywhere else. Clear that memory:
ipconfig /flushdnsIf the command itself errors, the DNS Client service underneath is unhealthy — the dedicated guide in this series covers restarting that service and what to do when Windows refuses to stop it. A successful flush followed by the same error means the bad answer is being served fresh by your DNS server, which is the next card.
This test separates your server is broken from the name is broken everywhere. In Command Prompt run:
nslookup example.com — this asks your normal, configured DNS servernslookup example.com 1.1.1.1 — this asks Cloudflare's public server insteadIf the second command returns an address and the first fails, your configured DNS server is the culprit — usually your router's forwarder or your provider's server. Change the DNS server on your network adapter (or in the router, to fix every device) to a reliable public pair and the error class dies. If both fail with the same non-existent domain answer, believe them: the name itself has a problem, and no setting on your PC can invent an address for it.
Windows consults one local file before it ever asks DNS: the hosts file at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts. Any name listed there is answered from that file and DNS is never asked. An old entry — left by an ancient tweak, an ad-block tool, a crack, or office software — can pin one site to a dead address or block it outright while every other site works.
Open the file in Notepad as administrator and look for the failing name. A healthy home-PC hosts file has almost no active lines; anything naming your failing site is suspect. The full hosts-file guide in this series shows how to clean it safely with a backup first. The fingerprint to remember: ping fails but nslookup succeeds — because nslookup talks to DNS directly and ignores the hosts file completely.
Some ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED errors are the truth. The website's own DNS may be down, a brand-new site may still be propagating to servers around the world, or the name may have been retired. The honest test: open the site on your phone using mobile data, not WiFi. If it fails there too, and both nslookup tests above failed, your PC is exonerated — wait, or tell the site owner, but stop repairing a healthy machine.
And one boundary for office PCs: if only internal names fail — the office server, the intranet page — while the public internet works, do not install public DNS as a cure. Internal names live only in the office DNS server, and pointing a work PC elsewhere breaks them further. That scenario has its own guide in this series.
See the complete ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED repair on a real PC — the tests, the commands and the DNS change, in the exact order used on this page.
▶️ Watch Full VideoIt means your browser asked DNS to convert the website name into an IP address and the lookup failed or returned that the name does not exist. Your internet connection itself may be completely fine — the failing step is only the name-to-number translation.
Because DNS is per-name, not per-connection. Sites whose answers are cached or whose DNS is healthy will open, while a site with a stale cached answer, a hosts file entry, or its own DNS trouble fails alone. That split is the most useful clue: one failing name points to name-specific causes, while every name failing points to your DNS server or router.
Yes. If the site's own DNS is down, the domain expired, or a new site is still propagating, every visitor gets the same failure. Test the site on your phone using mobile data — if it fails there too, your PC is not the problem and waiting is the honest fix.