How To Fix ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED Error

When browsing the internet, facing errors can be frustrating, especially when you don’t understand what they mean or how to fix them. One common error is the ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error. This error usually occurs when your browser can’t find the server that hosts the website you’re trying to visit.

It’s like dialing a phone number and receiving a message that the number is unavailable. This net::err_name_not_resolved error can prevent you from accessing your desired websites and disrupt your online activities.

Thus, resolving this error quickly is important because it can affect your productivity, access to important information, and overall browsing experience. Moreover, frequent occurrences of this error might signal underlying issues with your network settings or internet connection that require attention.

In this tutorial, we will walk you through what the ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error is, why it appears, and how you can fix it using simple steps. Whether you’re tech-savvy or want to browse without issues, this tutorial will help you resolve the error efficiently.

By the end of this tutorial, you will have a clear understanding of how to tackle the ERR NAME NOT RESOLVED error you can prevent it from interrupting your browsing in the future.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED means your browser can’t find the website’s IP address.
2. Check the network connection and restart your router.
3. Clear web browser cache and cookies to remove outdated data.
4. Flush the DNS cache on your computer to ensure accurate DNS lookups.
5. Disable the preloading pages setting in Chrome to avoid conflicts.
6. Configure your DNS server to use reliable public DNS servers like Google or Cloudflare.
7. Reset your firewall settings to remove any blocks.
8. Check and edit the hosts file to ensure correct IP mappings.
9. Disable DNSSEC if misconfigured.
10. On Android, clear Chrome cache, disable antivirus and restore Chrome to factory settings.

What Does ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED Mean?

When you type a website address (e.g., hosted.com) or URL of your site into your browser, a process happens behind the scenes to take you to the correct site. This process involves something called DNS, which stands for Domain Name System.

Think of DNS as the internet’s phonebook. It translates the human-friendly website addresses (like www.mywordpresswebsite.com) into IP addresses (like 192.168.1.2) that computers use to recognize each other on the network.

The ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error pops up when this DNS translation fails. Essentially, your browser can’t find the IP address for the website you’re trying to visit. It’s like looking up a name in the phonebook and finding no number listed. This error means the DNS server couldn’t resolve the domain name into the IP address.

We’ve experienced this error while accessing famous sites like Facebook.com. You also might see different versions of this error message, such as:

• ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED
• This site can’t be reached
• The server’s DNS address could not be found
• This webpage is not available

These messages point to the same problem: the DNS lookup failed. This can happen for several reasons, like issues with your internet connection, problems with the DNS server, or incorrect DNS settings on your device. Before we dive into the causes of net::err_name_not_resolved in detail, let’s see how it appears in various web browsers.

Google Chrome

The Chrome browser shows “This site can’t be reached”, which means the server IP address of the domain name you’re trying to access could not be found. The good thing about Chrome is that it provides hints for fixing the error name. You can also refresh your web page, or click on Details if you’re curious about the provided hints.

Microsoft Edge

Microsoft Edge displays a similar message to Chrome with some troubleshooting hints; however, the error message at the top differs in words that read, “Hmmm… can’t reach this page”. Moreover, you can click Diagnose issue to analyze and pinpoint the origin of the error. Alternatively, click Refreshto reload the page.

Mozilla Firefox

If you’re a Firefox user, you’ll see a page that says, “Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site”. We found this error message more user-friendly than Chrome and Edge. Why? It prefers plain English rather than the error code to inform the user that we can’t connect to the server at [yourwebsite.com]. It also suggests multiple ways to fix the err name not resolved if the domain you provided is correct.

Now that you know what NET::ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED means and how it appears on various browsers, let’s dive into the most common reasons that can trigger this error.

Causes of ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED

The ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error can be triggered by several factors, each affecting how your browser connects to a website. Understanding the following causes can help you troubleshoot the issue effectively.

Poor Internet Connection:

A weak or unstable internet connection can lead to DNS lookup failures. If your device can’t connect properly to the DNS server due to connectivity issues, you might see the ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error.

Outdated DNS Cache:

Your computer temporarily stores DNS information to speed up browsing. However, if this information is outdated or corrupted, it can stop you from accessing certain websites. This outdated cache might cause your browser to be unable to find the correct IP address.

Browser-Related Issues:

Sometimes, the error can be related to your browser. Outdated browser versions, corrupted cache, or incorrect settings can interfere with DNS resolution. If you clear your browser’s cache and update it to the current version, you will often fix these issues.

Firewall Blocking the Site:

Firewalls are designed to protect your computer from harmful websites and potential threats. However, sometimes, they can be overly protective and block legitimate sites. If your firewall settings are too strict, they might prevent the DNS request from completing.

Issues with the Website’s DNS Records:

Sometimes, the problem isn’t on your end. If the website you’re trying to visit has incorrect or misconfigured DNS records, the DNS server won’t be able to resolve the domain name to an IP address. This is something that the website owner needs to fix.

Temporary Server Issues:

Occasionally, the web application hosting server might experience temporary issues or downtime, causing the DNS server to fail to resolve the domain name. These issues are usually short-lived and often resolved once the server is back online.

Methods to Fix ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED

There are various ways to get ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED fixed; let’s start with the basic and quick ones.

Test Your Internet Connection

After ensuring you’ve entered the correct website address (domain names), the first thing to do is confirm the stability of your internet connection. An unstable connection can prevent your browser from accessing DNS servers. To check stability, try visiting different websites to see if they load. If they don’t, your internet connection might be the issue.

In this case, simply restarting your router or modem can fix connectivity issues. Unplug the power cable, leave about 30 seconds, and plug it back in. Then, give it a few minutes to reconnect completely.

Verifying you have a stable connection can rule out basic connectivity issues causing the ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error. If the problem persists, proceed to the next steps to troubleshoot further and check your Wi-Fi connection quality.

Ensure your machine is connected to the correct Wi-Fi connection and the signal strength is strong. Weak signals can cause connectivity problems.

Browser-related Solutions

There are 4 things that you can try to fix NET::ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error before trying the other methods.

Clear Browser Cache and Cookies

Sometimes, issues with your browser can lead to the ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error. Browsers store data like cache and cookies to improve your browsing experience, but this stored data can become outdated over time, causing errors. In this case, you need to clear your browser cache and cookies. This is how to do it in Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.

Google Chrome

Open Google Chrome and click the vertical dots menu ( ⋮ ) at the top-right corner. Then, go to Settings → Privacy and security → Delete browsing data. Select All time for the time range. Check both Cookies and other site data, and Cached images and files. Lastly, click Delete data.

Mozilla Firefox

If you are a Firefox user, open Firefox and click the three lines in the top-right corner. After that, go to Settings → Privacy & Security. Find Cookies and Site Data and click Clear Data.

Select Cookies and site data and Temporary cached files and pages. Then, click Clear.

Microsoft Edge

Open Edge browser. Click on three horizontal dots to navigate to Settings → Privacy, search, and services → Clear browsing data now. Then, click on Choose what to clear.

Select the time range for which you want to clear cache and cookies. Then, select Cached images and files, and Cookies and other site data. Finally, click Clear now.

This way, you can remove outdated data that might be causing the ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error, allowing your browser to load the latest website versions correctly.

Clear DNS Cache

If clearing the browser cache didn’t work, the issue might be rooted in your browser’s DNS cache. Let’s take the Chrome browser as an example; it has a DNS cache that needs to be cleared.

To clear this, launch your Chrome browser, type chrome://net-internals/#dns in the address bar (search box), and press Enter to open the DNS settings page. Click the Clear host cache button to remove Chrome’s DNS cache.

Similarly, Edge users can go to edge://net-internals/#dns URL to clear the DNS cache. But if you’re a Firefox user, the process is a little different for you. Open your Firefox browser, write about:networking#dnsin the address bar, and hit Enter. Click on the DNS tab. Then, hit the Clear DNS Cache button to clear it in Firefox.

Once done, try to access your website in your favorite browser to see if the error persists.

Switch Off Pre-loading Pages

Sometimes, your browser settings can cause the ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error. One specific setting that might be the culprit is the preloading pages setting. Let’s understand how this setting works and how to disable it to fix the error.

Modern browsers have a feature “preloading pages”, also called prefetching. This means that the browser tries to predict (based on your past activity) which links you might click next and starts loading those pages in the background. To preload pages, web browsers may use cookies and DNS data. This can make browsing faster, but it can also lead to problems.

When preloading pages, the browser makes DNS requests for many different pages. If there’s an issue with one of those requests, it might cause the ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error to appear. This happens because the browser is trying to load too many pages at once, and if the DNS can’t resolve one of those page names, it throws an error.

To fix it, you need to disable the preload page setting. Here’s how you can do it in Chrome, Edge, and Firefox:

Google Chrome

To disable the preloading of web pages completely, do the following things:

In your Chrome browser window, go to ⋮  (at top-right) →  Settings → Performance. In the right pane, scroll down to the Preload pages option and turn it off.

Type chrome://flags/ in the address bar. Search for Prerendering and disable it.

This will prompt you to relaunch Chrome; do so to apply changes.

Microsoft Edge

For Edge, click on the ⋯ menu at the upper right and navigate to Settings → Cookies and site permissions. Click on Manage and delete cookies and site data.

Find the option Preload pages for faster browsing and searching and turn it off.

Here, you may also want to disable the Preload your new tab page for a faster experience option that you can find at Settings → Start, home, and new tabs → New tab page.

Mozilla Firefox

In the Firefox browser’s address bar, type about:config and press Enter. You may see a warning note saying, “Proceed with Caution”. Click Accept the Risk and Continue button.

In the search bar at the top of the about:config page, type preference network.prefetch-next. Double-click on it to change its value from true to false. This will disable link prefetching.

Now, check if the ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED is fixed; otherwise, you may need to follow the additional steps below.

Type network.dns.disablePrefetch to search for DNS prefetching. You’ll see a preference named network.dns.disablePrefetch. Double-click on it to make it false, which means ‘disable DNS prefetching’. If it’s already false, do nothing.

Firefox also has speculative pre-connections that can be disabled to prevent further preloading. In the about:config search bar, type network.http.speculative-parallel-limit. Double-click on it and set its value to 0.

If you turn off the preloading pages setting, you can reduce the number of DNS requests from your browser. This may prevent the ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error. This small change can make a big difference in your browsing experience, helping to keep things running smoothly.

Once you have disabled preloading pages, you can try visiting the site that gave you trouble. This should help resolve the issue and get you back to browsing without interruptions. If the error persists, try updating your web browser to its latest version. Don’t worry if the error persists. There are other steps you can take, which we’ll cover next.

Important: As we already discussed, browsers use cookies and DNS data to preload pages, so it’s always better to flush the browser’s cache, cookies, and DNS cache before you disable preloaded page settings.

Clear the DNS Cache on Your Computer

If clearing the browser’s DNS cache didn’t resolve the error, you might be encountering the error due to your computer’s DNS cache. The DNS cache stores the IP addresses of websites you visit.

If this cache becomes outdated or is corrupted, it can prevent your browser from finding the correct IP address for a website, leading to the ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error.

To resolve it, press Windows key + R to open Run dialog box. Type cmd and press Enter to open the Command Prompt. In the Windows Command Prompt, type ipconfig /flushdns and press Enter. If you do everything correctly, you should see a message saying the DNS cache was successfully flushed.

Now, go back to your browser and try to access your website. If the error is resolved, all is well; otherwise, you may need to change your DNS server as described in the following section.

Configure the DNS Server on Your Computer

Switching your DNS server to a public one like Google’s or Cloudflare’s can help fix the ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error. Public DNS servers are often faster and more reliable than the default ones provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP).

For this tutorial, we are changing our default server to Cloudflare’s DNS server; however, you can use Google’s Public DNS server if you wish. Just replace Cloudflare’s DNS addresses with Google’s DNS addresses.

To configure the DNS server on your computer, open network connections. To do this, press Windows key + S to navigate to the quick search box. Look for the View Network Connections option and click on it to open.

Right-click on your active internet connection (Wi-Fi or Ethernet) and choose Properties.

Double-click Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4). This will open TCP/IPv4 properties. Select Use the following DNS server addresses. As we plan to switch to Cloudflare’s DNS, we’ll use the following DNS addresses:

• Preferred DNS server: 1.1.1.1
• Alternate DNS server: 1.0.0.1

For Google DNS, you can use:

• Preferred DNS server: 8.8.8.8
• Alternate DNS server: 8.8.4.4

Lastly, click OK to save the settings. Then close all dialog boxes.

By configuring your computer to use these reliable DNS servers, you will improve the chances of resolving domain names correctly and avoid errors like ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED.

Reset Your Firewall Settings

If any previous methods didn’t fix ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED, it’s time to reset your firewall settings. You might be wondering what the firewall is. A firewall is like a security guard for your PC or network. It checks and controls incoming and outgoing network traffic based on already-defined security rules.

Think of a firewall as security at an airport. Security checks everyone entering and leaving, ensuring only safe, authorized people can pass through. Similarly, a firewall checks all data traffic coming in and going out of your computer or network. It ensures only safe, authorized data is allowed. By doing this, it protects against unauthorized access, cyber-attacks, and malicious traffic.

Sometimes, you can set strict firewall settings that block your computer from accessing the DNS servers needed to resolve domain names, causing the ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error.

To settle this on Windows, open the Settings app and click on Update & Security.

Select Windows Security and then choose Firewall & network protection on the right.

Page down and click Restore firewalls to default.

Confirm by clicking Yes when prompted.

Resetting your firewall settings can remove any rules that could block DNS requests, helping to solve the ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error. If it’s still there, consider the following method to remove this error.

Check and Edit the hosts File

The hosts file on your computer maps domain names IP addresses. Incorrect entries in this file can cause the ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error by directing your browser to the wrong IP address or blocking access to certain sites.

In this case, open Notepad as administrator. To do this, type “Notepad” in the Windows search bar. Right-click on “Notepad” and click on Run as administrator.

In Notepad, click File → Open. Alternatively, you can press the Ctrl+O hotkey combination. Then, navigate to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\. Select All Files from the dropdown, choose the hosts file, and click Open.

Now, look for entries related to the website you’re trying to visit. Remove or correct any incorrect entries. Then. save the file by clicking File → Save.

After doing the above-mentioned steps, check if you can access your website successfully. Otherwise, it’s time to disable DNSSEC for your domain, which we cover below.

Disable DNSSEC for Your Domain

If you’ve reached this method without the ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error being resolved, there might be an issue with your site’s DNS records. If you aren’t the administrator of the site you’re trying to access, there is nothing you can do except wait for the site owner to fix it.

However, if the website belongs to you, you can try disabling your domain’s DNSSEC. Remember, if you recently migrated to a new web host, DNSSEC can stop the domain from propagating.

Now, what is DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions)? It’s a security extension that adds a layer of security to your domain’s DNS records to protect them from unauthorized access. However, if DNSSEC is enabled but misconfigured, it can cause the ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error by blocking proper DNS resolution.

To check if DNSSEC is enabled, run a WHOIS search. Provide your domain name or IP address and click the SEARCH button.

It will take a moment to produce a complete report. Go to the Raw Whois Data section and locate DNSSEC as follows:

If it says “unsigned”, this means DNSSEC is already disabled. In this case, you should contact your hosting provider.

However, if it says “signed”, disable it from your domain registrar account. If you purchased your domain name via your host, you can disable it from your web hosting account.

Furthermore, if you’re a Hosted client, log in to your Hosted account. Then, navigate to Manage Services → Domains. Click Manage next to your desired domain.

Scroll down to the Domain Information block. Check if the DNSSEC option is enabled for your domain. If DNSSEC is enabled, disable it. Follow the prompts to disable DNSSEC. Lastly, save your changes.

After disabling DNSSEC, try visiting your website. If you can access it successfully, there might be an issue with the DNSSEC configuration that you should correct.

How To Fix ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED on Android

If you encounter the ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error on your Android device, here are some easy things you can try to fix it:

• Turn off preload page settings as shown above (under “browser-related solutions”).
• Disable the antivirus app from your device. Alternatively, you can try to reboot your Android device in safe mode.
• Finally, you can try to restore the Chrome App to the factory version (do this according to your browser). To do this, go to Settings → Apps → App management. Look for the Chrome app, and click on it. After that, click on the Disable button. Here, you need to confirm your selection. Once it’s disabled, re-access your site to see if the err name not resolved is fixed.

These steps should help resolve the ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED error on your Android device, allowing you to browse the web smoothly again.

Other Common DNS Errors

When dealing with DNS errors, you might encounter several similar issues. Here are some common DNS errors and what they mean:

DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN:

This error occurs when the DNS lookup fails to find the domain, indicating that the domain name does not exist. It usually happens due to incorrect DNS settings or a typo in the URL. Refer full Article: How To Fix DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN Error

<a href=”https://www.hosted.com/articles/dns-probe-finished-nxdomain-error/” alt=”Link to Hosted.com Article – How To Fix DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN Error” title=”Hosted.com – How To Fix DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN Error” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>

DNS Server Not Responding:

This error occurs when your device cannot connect to the DNS server. It might be due to network issues or incorrect DNS server settings.

ERR_NAME_RESOLUTION_FAILED:

This error indicates that the DNS resolution process failed, preventing your browser from connecting to the website. It is often due to misconfigured network settings or DNS server issues.

Understanding these errors is important because these DNS problems typically have similar troubleshooting approaches. In most cases, you’ll need to start by clearing your web browser cache and flushing the DNS cache on your computer.

However, if the issue is on the server’s end, consider contacting your hosting provider with complete account details, error-related information, and the troubleshooting steps you’ve already taken.

FAQs

Other Blogs of Interest:

– How to Fix ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT Error

– How to Fix ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS Error

– How to Fix: This Site Can’t Provide a Secure Connection Error

– How To Fix ERR_CONNECTION_RESET

– How To Fix DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN Error