Windows takes multiple tries to resolve domain names, not sure how to fix it.

A few weeks ago I grabbed all the latest windows updates hearing about some big exploit that could murder future generations if I didn't update. So I did so, and since then, my PC's take forever to find new domain names. It'll take 2-3 refreshes on sites I don't go to often, and if I'm lucky it just takes 10-20s to load up places like TW the first time I've gone there in a day.

I've tried rebooting routers/switches and PC's. It does this on both IE and FF3 on Windows XP SP2. On both laptop and PC.

It's pretty annoying, but I'm stumped.

edit: It just says "Looking up host <hostname>" in browsers. In apps it just hangs at connecting (e.g. steam mp games, wow, war, etc). I usually have to kill the apps a couple times before it'll go.

Ive had similar problems lately but probably not as bad as what you are experiencing. I would manually try switching your DNS server to something other than the one provided to you by your ISP. Check out OpenDNS, or just give the testing DNS servers a try (4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2) and see if they respond better.

I tried setting my DNS on my PC to the ISP ones rather than the router. It's a bit more spry, but I'll probably need a couple days. After that I'll try some others to see if I can narrow it down.

Thanks

Just use OpenDNS.

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220