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.