Friday, January 02, 2009

Filezilla ECONNREFUSED Connection refused by server

If you are a Filezilla user for all your FTP needs then you may have faced this error. When you try to connect to your web host using Filezilla, you get this error "ECONNREFUSED - Connection refused by server". When I first got this error, I ran around from my ISP to my web host to get a solution. All the suggestions from my ISP, my web host and filezilla failed.

I just decided to take a step back to figure out when & how this problem had started. I had recently updated my filezilla and thought probably this was a bug with the new version. I tried installing the previous version but ended up with the same error. The only other thing I had done was to upgrade my zonealarm. Then it stuck me, that when my zone alarm was being upgraded, the firewall was shut down for some time. Thats when the windows firewall has automatically started without my knowledge.

Even after zone alarm had been upgraded, the windows firewall was still on. Effectively I had two firewalls running on my machine. Even with the Filezilla executable listed in the exceptions list for windows firewall, it was still being blocked.

I turned off my windows firewall and voila, filezilla was immediately able to connect. So the real culprit behind my entire ordeal was windows firewall.

I was also surprised to see incorrect error by Filezilla. If Filezilla had reported that it was being blocked by a firewall, it would have saved me a lot time. Instead the error was "Connection refused by server".

Hope this helps you to resolve your problem as well.

10 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi all,

To fix this in Windows Firewall, do the following:

Click on the Exceptions tab, then click on "Add Port". Enter port 21.

This will fix the problem. [For some reason simply adding the FileZilla Client to the list of exceptions does not work.]

Unknown said...

Please ignore the above, I've just realised this doesn't work. You'll have to fully disable the Windows Firewall.

Unknown said...

hey even after closing firewall its giving me the same error message

uttam said...

Thank u vary much... its working fine now. All because of my antivirus mcafee.

Robert Watson said...

you may also have luck setting the port to 80 (I'm pretty sure it's the default port)

I mention this because I dealt with the same issue even though I am using Ubuntu.

Unknown said...

My windows firewall was already off when I started getting this message but I do have McAfee. Took a while of trying but finally went into McAfee - Firewall - Settings - Program Permissions - look up your FTP client program and click on it - select Edit - set the access to Full. Hope this helps.

James said...

I have only the firewall on my router, which does not change. I do not have a software firewall active on my PC.

But this error is now happening with just one of my websites. I suspect the server.

neelabhrai said...

Thanks a lot for explaining the possible reason for such error. Even I was thinking that its' an error from my web hosting end.

But you save my precious amount of time with such a nice piece of an article.

--
Neelabh Rai
Cyber Entrepreneur | CYBER COPS India
http://www.cybercops.in

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