HOME | INDEX

Change DNS settings on Windows XP

For most of the time, you will never have to bother about the DNS setting on your Windows XP, this is taken care of by your sys admin in the office, or the tech guy who installed your wifi router at home. There are rare (hopefully) occasions when the Internet is sluggish or out-of-whack, sometimes you will even error messages like “Failed DNS lookup”, time out problems, DNS lookup error etc—mind you that these errors can be caused by other things too, perhaps it’s really a line problem, but changing the DNS settings on your PC is one of the things you can do to troubleshoot Internet problems at your home network.

When you plug and turn on your Windows XP (either in your network at the office or home network), the DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server—don’t worry if you don’t understand this, you don’t have to anyway, in order to complete this activity—the DHCP server is responsible for setting your DNS server, this is done for you in the background, but you can override it—and overriding the DNS setting is handy tool when troubleshooting Internet problems. Here are the steps.

1. From the Start menu, go to Control Panel

2. Choose Network connections, double click

3. Choose the connection icon (where the Internet is plugged), in this example, I am connected to the Internet using the LAN, and it’s the only connection defined. Double click

4. Click on properties

5. Select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) then click Properties

6. On the lower portion of the TCP/IP dialog window, select the radio button ‘User the following DNS server addresses’ and type in the address of an alternate DNS server. For this example, I am using the OpenDNS server addresses.

7. Click ‘OK’, then try browsing again.

You might want to keep the OpenDNS entries, OpenDNS has excellent uptime, and they are maintained probably better than the average ISP’s DNS servers are maintained.

If you want to show appreciation for my efforts dear reader, you could buy me a tall hazel nut Americano ($2) via PayPal. Thanks

KindaWannaDothat COPYRIGHT © Ted H.
The Stubborn theme is written by Ted H., it's free if you want it, you can either send me a note or you can can grab it at github