Windows – ‘DNS server isn’t responding’ error in windows 7 home premium

windows 7

I bought a brand new Dell Studio 1558 just last week. It has windows 7 home premium 64-bit installed on it. My friend who is occupying the adjacent room has a laptop with windows XP. Both of us are connecting to the same wireless router of the hotel. My friend is able to connect to the wireless network without any trouble, but when I try to connect, I get the error "DNS service isn't responding". I get this error when I run the troubleshooting option. I met two more people in the same hotel with win XP laptop and they too dont have any problem. I have gone to possibly all the forums and website but I haven't been able to fix this error :(. I have done all the basic troubleshooting but I have no luck yet. Pls help. Following is one forum where the problem seem to have been trouble shooted but not for all.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itpronetworking/thread/eeb84518-903d-46d1-9398-80cf211878d7

Problem Fixed (Added later)

I have fixed this issue myself. I do not know exactly which solution worked because I did a lot of changes to the driver settings. But in summary below is the list of what I did which I think fixed this issue.

1) Put 208.67.220.220 for "Preferred DNS server" and 208.67.222.222 for @alternate DNS server"

2) Disabled 'microsoft virtual wifi miniport adapter'. This was a bit tricky part because by default this adapter is hidden. It has to be made visible from the menu in the device manager.

3) Disabled all other miniport adaptors.

4) Restarted the laptop and bingo!!!

Best Answer

Try setting a dns like Google's public DNS:
http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/

Related Solutions

Windows Update Error 8024402F – How to Resolve on Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

Solved.

I haven't heard back from Microsoft Support since sending them my log files, but I got some time to take a look myself. Here's a relevant snippet:

+++++++++++  PT: Synchronizing server updates  +++++++++++
  + ServiceId = {9482F4B4-E343-43B6-B170-9A65BC822C77}, Server URL = https://www.update.microsoft.com/v6/ClientWebService/client.asmx
Timeout for accelerated install is already set
WARNING: Cached cookie has expired or new PID is available
WARNING: PTWarn: Anonymous plug-in skipped for WU
Triggering accelerated install by calling UpdateNow
No installable updates are available
WARNING: Send failed with hr = 80072efe.
WARNING: SendRequest failed with hr = 80072efe. Proxy List used: <(null)> Bypass List used : <(null)> Auth Schemes used : <>
WARNING: WinHttp: SendRequestUsingProxy failed for <http://download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/common/2009/06/2803268_2cf7737e73bd31ae709b14a95c8d2ecb7eccfbf3.cab>. error 0x80072efe
WARNING: WinHttp: SendRequestToServerForFileInformation MakeRequest failed. error 0x80072efe
WARNING: WinHttp: SendRequestToServerForFileInformation failed with 0x80072efe
WARNING: WinHttp: ShouldFileBeDownloaded failed with 0x80072efe

Note the failure to download http://download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/common/2009/06/2803268_2cf7737e73bd31ae709b14a95c8d2ecb7eccfbf3.cab.

I tried to download this CAB file from a browser, which didn't work. I then tried wget (in cygwin) which didn't work and reported "Connection reset by peer". I also had the same problem downloading the CAB file from Linux machines on my home network, so it was not an issue with the Windows machines themselves.

To cut a long story short, I finally tracked down the problem to my router, which is running DD-WRT.

Apparently I must have enabled the "Filter ActiveX" option about a month ago and forgotten that I'd done so.

enter image description here

Given the security problems with ActiveX, this sounds like a sensible option to activate, but upon reading the help... not so much!

Filter ActiveX Blocks HTTP requests containing a URL ending in ".ocx" or ".cab".

Yes... that would certainly cause problems! Unticking this and applying the settings to the router has cured the problem on both of my Windows machines, as you'd expect.

Thanks everyone for your help & suggestions, hope this is of use to someone else.

Windows – Wireless Keeps Setting Manual DNS Server

Incidentally, I rebuilt this laptop due to this and other weirdness and the rebuilt OS does not suffer from this problem.

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