You may face this problem when you try to upgrade your wordpress or when upgrading the plugins to the latest version.
Downloading update from …….
Download failed.: name lookup timed out
Installation Failed
This happens as there is a small bug in recognizing the Domain Name Space of wordpress.
There are two ways to fix it.
1> If you are using Firefox (can be downloaded from here), then click on Tools –> Options –> Privacy –> Exceptions –> add downloads.wordpress.org and click on Enable
2> Find the host file on your system, if you don’t know how to then these are the possible places where you can find it :
In Windows 95/98/Me – you can find it in C:\windows\
In Windows NT / 2000 / XP Pro you may find it in C:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\
And in XP you may find it in – C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\.
Open the host file with textpad / notepad
after the last entry in that file add this entry
72.233.56.139 downloads.wordpress.org
Make sure the space between ‘72.233.56.139’ and ‘downloads.wordpress.org’ is tab delimited and not space bar delimited.
This should solve the problem, if you still have problems, please leave a comment and lets see how best it can be fixed.