Installing the `dig` commands on Windows

Website, Application, Performance DNS & Network
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Most DNS diagnostic instructions given on this forum use the dig command.

It is a very convenient tool, available out of the box on macOS and also available on virtually all Unix flavors.

On Windows, nslookup.exe is available. This tool has some caveats, has been deprecated for a very long time, and has a syntax radically different from dig, so instructions given for dig will obviously not work without some changes.

The dig command can be installed on Windows, though.

  • Using chocolatey: with choco install bind-toolsonly
  • Manually: go to the ISC download page, click BIND, click Download next to the current stable version, and choose bind-win32-bit or bind-win64-bit. The dig.exe command is present in the archive, and can be used as a standalone tool; it doesn’t require the BIND server itself to be installed.
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