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I'm a bit stumped by this problem. My machine can ping google.com and www.google.com successfully. I get correct ips like 74.125..

When I try to go to google in Firefox or IE or Chrome, I get a typical dns error page. For some reason, Safari is still working.

My first guess was a caching issue, but after clearing all browser caches I still see the problem. Second guess was that malware reconfigured my proxy settings, but no luck there either. Everything is set to "No proxy". I downloaded wireshark and the browser is querying my dns server.

Other sites resolve fine in all browsers. Everything seems to be working as expected but... Basically, I have run out of ideas on this one.

In response to comments:

  • IP directly in browser works, obviously. This is a DNS issue, not a connection issue.
  • Clearing the DNS cache in windows did not fix the problem. Checking the chrome internals shows that www.google.com could not be resolved.
  • My hosts file is clean (no entries).
  • Rebooting does not fix the problem.
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  • a) This should be on SuperUser b) try using the IP directly in the browsers that aren't working - some firewalls can be configured to block specific programs - check yours. c) Chrome maintains its own DNS cache - about:dns also check about:net-internals#dns d) try flushing your DNS cache (ipconfig /flushdns)
    – cyberx86
    Commented Feb 21, 2012 at 1:01
  • be aware that nslookup uses its own DNS Client. Have you checked your hosts file (the new favorite malware file-to-edit)?
    – Mathias R. Jessen
    Commented Feb 21, 2012 at 1:11
  • have you rebooted? Sometimes browsers try internet before wireless has come up all the way and then don't notice that internet has started to work again. Closing browser or rebooting usually fix this.
    – Robert
    Commented Feb 21, 2012 at 1:21
  • I had this problem and it turned out to be my hosts file. I have no idea why I had added an entry for this particular domain. I just wanted to say thanks for posting the question and prompting me to check my hosts file!
    – gazareth
    Commented Jun 9, 2015 at 12:44

5 Answers 5

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For others without a virus: Your browser contains a DNS cache of its own. Try resolving the URL in Firefox or Edge. If you get a different result in Chrome, clear Chrome's DNS cache. Start here:

chrome://net-internals/#dns.

You'll have to copy/paste the link text into Chrome's onmibox. For more help, follow instructions here.

Clearing Chrome's cache causes no adverse effect.

Also, the equivalent Firefox command uses:

about:networking#dns

followed by clicking "Clear DNS cache".

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  • 1
    You can also take the more scientific approach of examining Chrome's cache for the URL not working. Chrome may be reporting an error likeerror: -105 (ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED)
    – ndemarco
    Commented Jan 13, 2016 at 14:25
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Answering my own question:

There was a rootkit virus attempting to redirect google.com. I was able to download a rootkit removal tool which found and removed the threat.

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  • 11
    What was the rootkit (and removal tool)?
    – Synetech
    Commented Feb 27, 2012 at 1:09
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I had the same issue on a Fedora 34. The answers here did not work for me - it wasn't a browser issue. Instead, the issue was fixed by editing /etc/nsswitch.conf. (I was connected via VPN and the VPN client had correctly updated resolv.conf to use VPN's DNS servers - ping/nslookup were able to resolve the name but nothing else including Chrome, Firefox, or wget was able to resolve the same name). It turns out that the configuration in nsswitch.conf was returning failure after an mdns4 search failed - it looks like for these VPN names such a thing wasn't succeeding or never meant to succeed. The following edit fixed it (older line commented out).

# hosts:      files myhostname mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] resolve [!UNAVAIL=return] dns
hosts:      files myhostname mdns4_minimal resolve dns
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  • This is the second (or third) time I'm stumbling over this, and I keep forgetting. Ugh, thank you.
    – Priidu Neemre
    Commented Jan 10, 2023 at 8:46
  • Works for me in July of 2023. Thanks!
    – Dennis D
    Commented Jul 14, 2023 at 19:33
  • A few other places have suggested that this fix is something to do with an IPv4 / IPv6 DNS issue. I don't fully understand it, but adding for info...
    – dsz
    Commented Dec 30, 2023 at 5:06
  • @dsz What are those "other places"?
    – chaosink
    Commented Jul 4 at 17:08
  • What about Windows 11?
    – chaosink
    Commented Jul 4 at 17:09
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This is a very old post now, but for anyone looking into this in 2022, Chrome also has a setting called "secure DNS", and while it may do other things, it also allows seems to permit Chrome to reach out to Google's DNS servers when a name can't be found instead of falling back to my local DNS.

For me, I have a local DNS set up with an A record so I can use my DDNS FQDN to access my NAS from both inside and outside my network. I could ping and nslookup in Terminal, but I couldn't reach it in chrome/edge or Firefox at first.

I'm way out of my depth here so please don't change any settings if you don't understand their impact, but once I turned off that setting, my DDNS name properly resolved to the private IP while inside my LAN. I've turned the setting back up and it retained the setting, at least for a while, but doing ipconfig /flushdns and clearing the dns cache in chrome would break it again.

I don't like that Chrome bypasses the system DNS settings to do whatever it wants, I've read other reports where users just blocked it the google DNS entirely to stop Chrome from sneaking around.

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0

As a follow up to @ndemarco's answer (yes from 2016), Edge is now based on Chromium, and at least for me, it seems to be sharing Chrome's DNS cache.

I just moved a new domain to be parked on another domain, so instead of showing a generic WordPress page, it should show the established content I have. But Chrome would not change to the new IP address, and stubbornly stuck to the old content coming from the old IP. Note that nslookup shows the correct IP address.

I checked in Edge - same thing. Checked in IE11, it showed the updated site.

I used chrome://net-internals/#dns and the "Clear host cache" button and it did not update right, BUT ... Edge did update right away - yes after clearing host cache in Chrome!

A few forced refreshes (Ctrl-F5) in Chrome finally brought up the correct content.

ndemarco's answer says to check in Firefox or Edge, but things have changed, and testing in Edge does not necessarily give an independent result compared to Chrome!

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