Three small commands do most of the heavy lifting in DNS repair — but only when they are run as administrator, in the right order, and for the right reason. Here is what each one actually does to your PC.
The repair at the heart of the video is a short sequence: ipconfig /flushdns, ipconfig /release and ipconfig /renew. People run these commands every day, often in the wrong order or without administrator rights, and then conclude they do not work. Each command does one specific job. Flush erases what your PC remembers about website names. Release gives back the address your router lent you. Renew asks for a fresh lease — and fresh DNS servers along with it. Run in sequence, they rebuild your PC's network information from the router instead of from stale memory.
Every time your PC looks up a website name, it stores the answer in the DNS resolver cache for a while, so repeat visits are instant. That is normally a kindness. But if a website moved to a new server, or a lookup was answered wrongly during a router glitch, the cache keeps serving the bad answer long after the real problem is gone.
The symptom is oddly specific: the same one or two sites fail, or everything failed yesterday and still fails today even though your phone works fine. That fingerprint — stale memory, healthy network — is exactly what flushing is for. Flushing does not delete anything precious; the cache simply rebuilds itself from live answers.
This is the step most failed attempts miss. ipconfig /flushdns works in a normal window, but release and renew need an elevated prompt. Without it you get errors or silent half-results and walk away thinking the method is broken.
cmdDo the whole sequence in this one window without closing it between commands, so nothing half-applies.
Run them exactly in this sequence, pressing Enter after each and waiting for it to finish:
ipconfig /flushdns — must reply Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache. Anything else means the DNS Client service has a problem.ipconfig /release — the adapter gives up its address. Your connection drops; the WiFi icon may show a warning. This is expected, not damage.ipconfig /renew — takes a few seconds, then prints your new IPv4 address, gateway and DNS servers. Compare the DNS servers line with what you expect.On a WiFi connection the renew step is the valuable one: the router hands over its current DNS servers again, replacing whatever your PC had memorised from an older network — a very common cause after travelling or changing routers.
Once the main three have run, two relatives help you inspect rather than guess. ipconfig /displaydns shows what is currently sitting in the cache — a long list is normal after a few minutes of browsing. If a failing site appears there with a strange address, you have found your stale entry in the act.
ipconfig /registerdns asks Windows to re-register the PC's own name with the DNS server. It matters mostly on office networks, where other people reach your machine by name. At home it is harmless but rarely the hero. Neither command is a daily routine — these are repair tools, and the cache is supposed to fill up again in normal use.
Be clear about the boundary. Flushing clears your PC's memory; it cannot repair the server your PC asks. If your configured DNS server is dead, the cache will refill with failures within minutes and the problem returns — the cure then is changing the DNS server on the adapter or the router, not flushing harder.
Likewise, if the three ping test showed the public IP itself failing, this sequence changes nothing, because the fault is the line. Use the test first, and let the result — not hope — choose the tool.
ipconfig /release disconnects you until renew completes. Do not run it during a download, a call or a remote session you cannot afford to drop — and if renew fails, restart the router once and run renew again before panicking.
See every step on a real Windows PC — the tests, the commands and the DNS change, in order.
▶️ Watch Full VideoRelease gives your current IP address back to the router and leaves the adapter with no address. Renew asks the router for a fresh lease, and the new answer includes gateway and DNS server settings as well. Running renew alone often works, but release first guarantees the old information is fully discarded.
Yes. Between release and renew your PC has no IP address, so nothing can load for those few seconds. If the pause stretches past a minute, renew did not complete — check that the router is on and the WiFi is still connected, then run ipconfig /renew again.
Only when something is wrong. The cache exists to make browsing faster, and Windows manages it automatically. Flushing as a weekly ritual does no harm, but it also does no good — treat it as a repair step for stale or wrong entries, not as maintenance.