It appears as if this error might be caused by the domain whois.arin.net being unavailable from time to time, and this causes the DNS error 103.

I'm going to contact them, and see if they can provide me with any additional information....

That's what I thought at first. Then, after reading earlier posts on this, I did as you suggested with DNS servers. Comcast doesn't honor user-selected servers, but I used ipconfig /release, /renew. This released my Autoconfig DHCP settings and then reset them - to exactly what they had been before. But it worked!

Well I'll be, this works like a champ, thanks Codger!

If you are using fixed IP addresses on your computer you can also try this.

From a command prompt, type:
IPCONFIG /flushdns
This will flush your current DNS cache.

Then type:
IPCONFIG /registerdns
This will refresh all DHCP leases and re-register DNS names.

I tried this on my network at home and it worked.

If you want to display the contents of your current DNS cache, type:
IPCONFIG /displaydns

ARIN sent me a timely, friendly response to my query advising that they have not been experiencing any problems on their side.

So I'm guessing this is a forward DNS problem that should be resolved using the steps listed in this thread...

Tried this (re-register dns) and it didn't work

Still getting Error Socket 103 problems.

No other DNS problems noted...

Please make sure you are using at least version 2.2.2.

This version has a retry.

If you've already run the installation program, you can download the executable only at:

http://www.hendricom.com/Downloads/spamxwindowsbinonly.zip

Will do. Thanks

Adrian

2.2.2 is giving me errors which say

DNS error, retry#3 abuse lookup

SpamX is resolving domains fine though

Yikes! where did some of this stuff come from? Most of it seems to be from ad servers/trackers, but there's stuff from sex sites and trackers. I haven't even been to sites where any sex ads were visible, let alone sex sites themselves.

I suspect that the culprit for these repeated 103 errors is the Microsoft DNS Client service.

For whatever reason, it is not keeping it's cache up to date. I've had a DNS lookup attempted until I believed it would never be resolved.

So I turned the DNS Client service off, and disabled it.

Since doing this, all of my URLs are still resolved by my ISPs DNS (maybe even faster) in Internet Explorer, and SpamX is resolving names. It may have to retry once in a while, but it always seems to get an answer. This was not the case before.

To disable this service on your computer, go to Control Panel, click Administrative Tools, click Services.

Right click on DNS Client, and click Stop.
Right click on DNS Client, and click Properties, then in Startup type: select Disabled, the click Ok.

I'm curious if you have the same experience...