Whois Query under Microsoft

WHOIS is a query and response protocol that provides information about the domains, networks and hosts.

If the domainis found, the whois query would provide following information

  1. Name, postal and email address of the person and contact numbers of the person under whose name the domain is registered.
  2. Creation and Expiration Date.

Whois records are stored with the domain registrars.

How to carry out Whois query under Windows

Microsoft Windows Operating Systems does not have an inbuilt whois utility. However, you can download a small whois utility from Microsoft Technet (Windows Sysinternals) to carry out a whois search.

Download whois.zip from http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/Whois.zip.

Unzip the file.

Open command prompt.

Navigate to the directory where you extracted the zip file.

Execute the command in the following format:

whois domainname [whois.server]

where domain name can be either a DNS

name (e.g. www.abc.com) or IP address (e.g.11.22.11.22)

For the whois.server, you have to select a server from the following whois server list.

Whois Server List 1
Whois Server List 2

An example - whois microsoft.com whois.verisign-grs.com

C:\ >whois microsoft.com whois.verisign-grs.com

Whois v1.01 - Domain information lookup utility
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com
Copyright (C) 2005 Mark Russinovich
Name Server.......... NS2.MSFT.NET
Name Server.......... NS4.MSFT.NET
Name Server.......... NS1.MSFT.NET
Name Server.......... NS5.MSFT.NET
Name Server.......... NS3.MSFT.NET
Connecting to whois.verisign-grs.com...
Connecting to whois.verisign-grs.com...
Connecting to whois.melbourneit.com...
Domain Name.......... microsoft.com
Creation Date........ 1991-05-02
Registration Date.... 2009-10-06
Expiry Date.......... 2015-05-04
Organisation Name.... Microsoft
Corporation

Manu Zacharia
Manu Zacharia
Microsoft MVP (Enterprise Security), ISLA-2010 (ISC)2
C|EH, C|HFI, MCP, CCNA, AFCEH
Certified ISO 27001:2005 (ISMS) Lead Auditor
Organisation Address. One Microsoft Way
Organisation Address.
Organisation Address. Redmond
Organisation Address. 98052
Organisation Address. WA
Organisation Address. UNITED STATES
Admin Name........... Administrator .
Admin Address........ One Microsoft Way
Admin Address........
Admin Address........ Redmond
Admin Address........ 98052
Admin Address........ WA
Admin Address........ UNITED STATES
Admin Email..........
domains@microsoft.com

Admin Phone.......... +1.4258828080
Admin Fax............
Tech Name............ Hostmaster .
Tech Address......... One Microsoft Way
Tech Address.........
Tech Address......... Redmond
Tech Address......... 98052
Tech Address......... WA
Tech Address......... UNITED STATES
Tech Email........... msnhst@microsoft.com
Tech Phone........... +1.4258828080
Tech Fax.............