DNS settings are no longer applied while DNS Client is disabled

[Sophodot]

I use blackhosts to auto-update the hosts file.
In order to use a large hosts file, I have disabled the DNS Client service.
I manually set Cloudflare as the preferred DNS provider.
While my internet speed hasn't changed (500Mbps), starting a couple of days ago webpages take considerably longer to load presumably because all DNS requests fall back on a much slower server.
Conclusion: After running with this setup for 6 years, some stupid change in the August 2023 Windows 10 update has made choosing a DNS server address to be completely ignored when the DNS client service is not running.
I have set a DNS address in my router.
Setting a DNS in browser seems to provide faster load times in Firefox but not in Chrome. Edge just displays an error "Please verify that this is a valid provider" when trying to choose any different DNS.
I am looking for a workaround to force all DNS queries be run through a fast provider such as Cloudflare. I tried installing their WARP app, but the need to always keep it running, the large installation size for such a simple purpose and its UI made me give up on it immediately. There have to be better alternatives.

 

[Solaris17]

mmmmmmmmm

I guess you are blocking locally.

You can re-enable the service and set the only DNS server to be 127.0.0.1 so it will try local before reaching out. At which point it will ask the gateway.

Then just set the upstream in the router to 1.1.1.1

finally depending on your router you can setup a rule to redirect port 53 requests to 192.168.1.1 to force other devices on the network to adhere to the upstream you put in the router.

It wont provide blocking since you are doing that locally. but its more of a bonus for random IoT devices that reach out to hard programmed DNS servers in there FW.

 

[Sophodot]

mmmmmmmmm

I guess you are blocking locally.

You can re-enable the service and set the only DNS server to be 127.0.0.1 so it will try local before reaching out. At which point it will ask the gateway.

Then just set the upstream in the router to 1.1.1.1

finally depending on your router you can setup a rule to redirect port 53 requests to 192.168.1.1 to force other devices on the network to adhere to the upstream you put in the router.

It wont provide blocking since you are doing that locally. but its more of a bonus for random IoT devices that reach out to hard programmed DNS servers in there FW.

I don't have a Raspberry Pi or similar device to use as a homemade DNS server so I opted to block locally with the hosts file.

Enabling the DNS cache service freezes Internet access for at least 10 minutes every time the computer starts or I reconnect to a network while it uses a single CPU thread to painstakingly load up the whole ~6.6MB hosts file and takes up 200MB of RAM.

With the caching service disabled DNS requests will always go through the full lookup process, and setting the server to 1.1.1.1 allowed me to still get fast response times.

I have tried uninstalling the last Windows update to no effect.

My router is a TP Link Archer AX10 from my ISP so it might be a bit more persistent in using their own DNS rather than from a third-party.

The way I see it is I'm forced to choose between:
1. Enable the DNS client and disable hosts file blocking
2. Disable the client and put up with slow DNS response times
3. Enable both and cope with the wasted RAM, CPU and many minutes of downtime every time I start the computer.

I believe that the easiest one to solve is to find a way to make Windows run DNS requests through 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 without loading up all the hosts file in cache.
I couldn't find anything with Google about the issue of DNS address settings being ignored. If there really is no way to restore it, I will eventually give up and buy a device to set up a Pi-hole.

 

[chrcoluk]

I think its better to do any hosts file on your router, then its also network wide, not just device wide and will also solve this problem.

Also it sounds like you using unmaintained hosts lists (ones that dont remove outdated entries) as your hosts file is ridiculously big.

 

[Sophodot]

I think its better to do any hosts file on your router, then its also network wide, not just device wide and will also solve this problem.

Also it sounds like you using unmaintained hosts lists (ones that dont remove outdated entries) as your hosts file is ridiculously big.

I'm reasonably certain that such a cheap router does not support this. I looked at parental controls and they cap out at 32 entries.

The maintained hosts list really is this big.

 

[trparky]

There is AdGuard for Windows which will do a whole lot more than just what you're asking for, it blocks ads too. And with the advent of Manifest v3 in Chrome which puts most adblocking extensions in the grave, AdGuard is not one of them for it filters the ads out of the data stream before it even hits your browser to be rendered. It features its own DNS blocking bypassing even the built-in Windows DNS client.

 

[chrcoluk]

I'm reasonably certain that such a cheap router does not support this. I looked at parental controls and they cap out at 32 entries.

The maintained hosts list really is this big.

I expect the removal of dead domains isnt being maintained well given the size.

Without much effort I found 10 domains on that list that are just parked at a registrar. Probably numerous false positives as well, as sadly fixing up dead/fixed domains is seen as less important as adding newly discovered one's.

 

[Calenhad]

I just ... 6.6MB hosts file? What on Earth are you not blocking? Please find a different way to do your adblocking. You are using a method not designed to do so. The hosts file is not meant for large scale DNS blocking.

And looking at that hosts file. There are so many subdomain redirects that could be made into domain redirects and save tons of space. Short version, it is a mess.

 

[trparky]

I just ... 6.6MB hosts file?

Yikes. I have a feeling that the system is choking on a hosts file being that big.

Please find a different way to do your adblocking.

Exactly. Using hosts file to do blocking is not a good idea.

@Sophodot, start looking into other ways to do what you want to do, like for instance... AdGuard. It is purpose built to do what you're asking.