ERR_NAME_RESOLUTION_FAILED

What’s actually happening

You hit a domain and Chrome reports the IP couldn't be found. Unlike a hard NXDOMAIN, this one is often transient — the resolver timed out, or it handed back a cached IP for a host that has since moved. You'll see it most on Windows, sometimes only for one domain while others load fine. A retry minutes later, or from another network, frequently works.

Common causes

• The DNS server was momentarily unreachable or overloaded and the query timed out before any answer came back
• A stale cached record (in the OS resolver cache or Chrome) still points at an old IP the site no longer uses after a migration
• An entry in the hosts file pins the domain to an IP that's now wrong or dead
• Aggressive AV/firewall or a DNS-filtering proxy silently dropped the lookup
• Flaky Wi-Fi or a half-up connection where DNS packets are lost but the link looks 'connected'

How to fix it

1. Flush the OS DNS cacheWindows: 'ipconfig /flushdns'. macOS: 'sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder'. This is the single highest-hit fix here because the usual cause is a cached IP that went stale after the site moved.
2. Clear Chrome's host cachechrome://net-internals/#dns > Clear host cache, then reload. Chrome keeps its own short-lived cache that can outlive the OS flush.
3. Check the hosts file for a bad pinWindows: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts. macOS/Linux: /etc/hosts. Remove or correct any line forcing the failing domain to a specific IP — a leftover dev or ad-block entry is a common culprit.
4. Switch resolvers to rule out the serverSet DNS to 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8. If the domain resolves, your previous resolver was down or slow; if not, the record genuinely isn't resolving anywhere yet (recent DNS change still propagating).
5. Test the lookup directlyRun 'nslookup example.com 1.1.1.1'. A clean answer means the name is fine and the fault is local caching; a SERVFAIL or timeout points upstream at the zone or resolver.