The Windows Command Line Is Hiding These 6 Awesome Network Troubleshooting Tools
How-To Geek, Sunday, July 19th, 2026
A walkthrough of six built-in Windows PowerShell commands for diagnosing and fixing common network connectivity problems.
The article highlights six command-line utilities available in Windows PowerShell for network troubleshooting: ipconfig for adapter and DNS cache management, ping for testing reachability of routers and external hosts, nslookup for evaluating DNS resolution performance, netsh for resetting the TCP/IP stack and managing saved Wi-Fi profiles, tracert for mapping packet routes and isolating latency at each hop, and Restart-NetAdapter for quickly rebooting an adapter.
Each tool is explained with practical variants and the scenarios where it helps isolate whether a fault is local or upstream. The author recommends running PowerShell as administrator for full functionality.