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Satch

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May be old hat to some but news to me and it worked very well.

Daily Telegraph "Boot Camp" section today gave tip to clear out the DNS data cache which can become clogged and slow things down. So you do a manual flush via the Command prompt, so:

click "Start" menu

click "Run" icon

then type in: cmd

click OK

at flashing Command Prompt type:

ipconfig /flushdns

Press enter and you should get a "successfully flushed" message. (NB: there is a space between "g" and "/")
 
Wonderfull :bannana: Dont know if its going to make the computer faster but its got to be worth a go.
 
The dogs danglies on a greyhound now :rock:
 
Well done mate. Have a narna and a rep point. :bannana:
 
Have another :bannana: and a point
 
this is indeed a very useful trick, but only a temporary measure, what you are doing is clearing out the DNS cache which Windows XP uses to recall web sites faster. Unless you take a few more steps any gains you make will be lost in a few hours

The information stored here is really only detrimental when it's a negative value, these are only ever stored for five minutes but we can stop windoze from cacheing them at all or when you visit thousands of web sites a day which means we need to control the amount of time windows keeps this cache

After you've run the flush dns routine above you need to go back to the start menu and using "run" type in "regedit" once the registry editor opens expand the following "tree"

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dnscache\Parameters

we need to add a new DWord to the registry at this point.

In the right window right click and select "new" then "DWORD" in the popup menu

Back in the main window right click on the new entry and select "rename" then Call it

"MaxNegativeCacheTtl" if it doesn't already have a zero value adjust that as well.

You've now stopped windows storing any data about sites you visit which for whatever reason are unavailable at that time.

We can go a little further here, Windows stores postive values for 24 hours there is no real reason for this (as most pages will update their DNS every 4 hours) so reducing that limit to 4 hours can make things run a whole lot smoother

Add another DWord at the same location as the previous one but this time call it

"MaxCacheTtl" and in the value box enter "14400" You must make sure that you enter this as a decimal value rather than a hexadecimal value

14400 is the number of seconds that windows will now store your DNS cache and for those who do a lot of browsing will make a significant difference to the speed of IE


Now, the ususal caveat, before editing the registry make sure you have made a backup and if you are unsure of what you are doing - then it's best to leave things as is

HTH

Andy
 
Last edited:
Ahhh very cunning and will try that later on.

Would any of that cause probs. for connections running via an office network?

Would not like to be the cause of our easily stressed IT support bloke having another nosebleed.


Regards


S.
 
Satch said:
Would not like to be the cause of our easily stressed IT support bloke having another nosebleed.

Your IT guy should have locked your ass down so you can't edit the registry. If he hasn't, then..............
 
GrahamC230K said:
Your IT guy should have locked your ass down so you can't edit the registry. If he hasn't, then..............


doh! is the word that graham is looking for
 
Doh! it is.
 
I'm not going to suggest making any adjustments to your company's registry - As Graham says you should be thoroughly locked out of that.

For home users (even if you are on a network) or those using their own computers these tweaks should have no ill effects :)

Andy
 
andy_k said:
this is indeed a very useful trick, but only a temporary measure, what you are doing is clearing out the DNS cache which Windows XP uses to recall web sites faster. Unless you take a few more steps any gains you make will be lost in a few hours

The information stored here is really only detrimental when it's a negative value, these are only ever stored for five minutes but we can stop windoze from cacheing them at all or when you visit thousands of web sites a day which means we need to control the amount of time windows keeps this cache

After you've run the flush dns routine above you need to go back to the start menu and using "run" type in "regedit" once the registry editor opens expand the following "tree"

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dnscache\Parameters

we need to add a new DWord to the registry at this point.

In the right window right click and select "new" then "DWORD" in the popup menu

Back in the main window right click on the new entry and select "rename" then Call it

"MaxNegativeCacheTtl" if it doesn't already have a zero value adjust that as well.

You've now stopped windows storing any data about sites you visit which for whatever reason are unavailable at that time.

We can go a little further here, Windows stores postive values for 24 hours there is no real reason for this (as most pages will update their DNS every 4 hours) so reducing that limit to 4 hours can make things run a whole lot smoother

Add another DWord at the same location as the previous one but this time call it

"MaxCacheTtl" and in the value box enter "14400" You must make sure that you enter this as a decimal value rather than a hexadecimal value

14400 is the number of seconds that windows will now store your DNS cache and for those who do a lot of browsing will make a significant difference to the speed of IE


Now, the ususal caveat, before editing the registry make sure you have made a backup and if you are unsure of what you are doing - then it's best to leave things as is

HTH

Andy

Excellent. Worked for me.
 

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