Slow update speeds in Windows 8 (and slow network speeds in general) are often because of the ‘poisoned’ DNS cache. This is because it can contain invalid or expired DNS records. Symptoms may be difficulty in opening websites or even problems with Windows updates. What we’ll do here to attempt to rectify this is to clear the DNS cache by simply flushing the invalid or expired DNS entries.
How to Flush the DNS Cache to speed up Windows 8
- Logon to your Windows 8 computer with an administrative account.
- Click on the desktop tile from the Start screen to go to the desktop window.
- Hover the mouse over the bottom right corner of the window.
- From the displayed options, click “Search”.
- On the opened Search pane at the top right, ensure that the Apps category is selected.
- Type in “cmd” without the speech marks.
- From the displayed results on the Apps window, right-click on Command Prompt.
- From the displayed advanced options at the bottom of the window, left click on “Run as administrator”.
- When you see the User Account Control box, click “Yes” to provide the administrator approval to open the command prompt with the elevated privileges.
- At the black command prompt window, type “ipconfig /flushdns” and press enter. This will delete the DNS cache.
- Close the command prompt window when done.
- Restart the computer.
After flushing the DNS cache, the IP address of any website or network device is then automatically resolved by the DNS resolver using a DNS server.