sorry for being dumb, how do i flush dns?
from the commandline:
ipconfig /flushdns
I doubt that it will make a difference though, considering that you have the problem with multiple different sites.
But clearing the browser cache out might very well make a difference. While you're at it, you may want to crank down the size of the browser cache as well. I have mine set to 10MB, and it works great. By default IE will dedicate something like 12% of your harddrive for its temporary files. In my experience, if you're on broadband it's faster to just re-download a couple of images than IE trying to locate old copies of them among 15GB of cached junk.