At least twice in the last few months I’ve went to a popular domain registrar and searched for a domain name where the result was something like your domain is available, only for it to become unavailable moments later. I know this has probably happened to you, it’s happened to nearly everyone I know. For this reason and others, many domain investors don’t trust domain registrars to do domain name searches. Some domain investors use WHOIS lookup instead, and today I will show you how to do a WHOIS lookup using Command Prompt on your Windows computer in 7 easy steps.
STEP ONE: Download the SysInternals Suite from Microsoft, it’s free.
STEP TWO: Unzip the file. When it prompts you where to save, select your path to c:\Windows\System32 or where the Windows\System32 file resides on your machine.
STEP THREE: Press the Windows key on your keyboard and type CMD. You should see the option to open CMD Prompt window.
STEP FOUR: Type whois -v jasonofflorida.com and press enter
STEP FIVE: Notice data is returned, shown below.
STEP SIX: If you prefer a nicer output you can use command whois -v jasonofflorida.com > jasonofflorida.text
STEP SEVEN: click the Windows key and type in jasonofflorida.text – there you will see your data exported to a text file you can open with notepad.
Now you know how to do a WHOIS lookup using Command Prompt. As you can see, there’s no need to search via a browser, and of course there’s no need to use those risky domain registrars to determine if a domain name is available. For further reading, you can view my 10 part series about the most popular DNS Records, If you’re looking to buy a domain, you can view 14 Things You Must Know Before You Buy A Domain Name. If you received some added value from my post, please like and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, or subscibe to jasonofflorida.com.
