Calling Windows geeks!

[annathepiper]

Need a bit of help with a Windows 98 DNS problem. mamishka needs to flush the DNS cache on her system, and we have determined that rebooting the box does not seem to actually do it. I know that on XP, I can type "ipconfig /flushdns" to do this, but Meems has no such command on her Win98 box.

(For context, we ran into this problem tonight, as a result of lyonesse having reset DNS settings on her site, which hosts Mimi's sunandmoonmurals.com domain. Meems discovered tonight that her box was not letting her connect to sunandmoonmurals.com in her browser, though she was able to get to www.sunandmoonmurals.com. I had the same behavior on my system, until I did "ipconfig /flushdns".)

So how can we kick Mimi's DNS cache in the head with minimum effort? Thanks in advance for cluage!

Comments

[king-chiron.livejournal.com]

Try

ipconfig /release_all

I think that might work with Win98

[kent.livejournal.com]

I once had this problem on my old Windows 98 laptop. It apparently was not a DNS problem but a corrupted HOSTS file. See this page (http://accs-net.com/hosts/how_to_use_hosts.html) for a little about that file (but not a solution to this problem). I believe you can do the following to see if the problem is with the HOSTS file:

1) Locate the file c:\Windows\Hosts

2) Back up the file.

3) Either delete the file (you may lose some ad-blocking settings) or try to locate the line that has sunandmoonmurals.com. According to this site (http://computercops.biz/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=5660), Windows first looks at the HOSTS file to look up the DNS for an IP address before it actually contacts the DNS server. If the setting is incorrect in the HOSTS file, it won't matter if the DNS server has been updated; the IP address will still be "wrong" according to Windows.


I know that this solved my problem. I remember that I couldn't get a to a number of sites for quite a while and finally contacted my ISP to find out what was wrong.

[wingedelf.livejournal.com]

Under Win9x, the command was winipcfg.
You'll probably need to use the /release all switch.

[annathepiper]

Ah, okay. I don't know enough about Winipcfg--she found the tool on her system, and I suggested that she try Renew All, but that didn't work.

I'll pass this suggestion on to her. Thanks!

[annathepiper]

Is ipconfig available in Win98 without having to install anything special? I forget.

(Though the Release_All option is in keeping with what wingedelf says about Winipcfg. Thanks!)

[annathepiper]

alinsa also suggested looking at the "hosts" file to me, but this is the part that confuses me: on Windows98, does anything actually edit that file without user intervention? In the time I've known Meems, I've not known anybody to actually mess with that file on her system, and that includes her. :) So I was pretty sure that nothing would have actually altered the file.

[wingedelf.livejournal.com]

ack! It may simply be /renew. It has been so long, i can't remember. /? should display the proper syntax for applying switches, though.

[kent.livejournal.com]

I know that I had never even heard of that file before I had the problem. I think it's just automatically created by Windows.

[annathepiper]

There are Renew and Renew All, and, I think, Release and Release All--according to various and sundry pages I found. But they weren't exactly clear on what button did what (they were referring to the GUI version of the tool, not the command line), and I wasn't sure which of them might have dealt with DNS cache flushes.

[annathepiper]

I don't know if it's automatically created, per se, unless just as part of the initial installation. It's the Windows equivalent of the "hosts" file on a Unix/Linux box, to the best of my knowledge, and as far as I know nothing automatically alters the hosts file on those systems either.

But thanks for the link and the info! kingchiron and wingedelf have offered a couple of other ideas, too, and if those don't work, I'll see about this. :)

[janne.livejournal.com]

I kept having my old win98 box lock up over IP issues, and always used the GUI version (started from the command line with winipcfg or somesuch), and then hit release all and renew all. Don't know how that deals with DNS, though.

[king-chiron.livejournal.com]

Here's what gave me the idea it would work on W98

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/471/ms_route.html

[howlinhobbit.livejournal.com]

this is the part that confuses me: on Windows98, does anything actually edit that file without user intervention?
Yes. It was a standard spammer trick for a while. They'd change settings there so that everytime you tried to go to a given place or places you'd go to their site instead. It hosed up my search capability for quite some time.

Once you've edited the file, mark it read only.

HH

[annathepiper]

Ahso. Thanks for the clarification. :)

[annathepiper]

Ah, I see! Thanks for the link. :)

[annathepiper]

If I understand such things correctly, what you're doing is basically making your computer go ask its DHCP server for updated DNS information. So that's the connection. I'm a bit shaky on the mechanics of it, though. :)