Updated to 1.72 - "...machine actively refused it" message!

[Shakel]

Well, topic pretty much explains it all. I updaed today from 1.6 to 1.72, and now the two torrents I was downloading just the second before uTorrent closed and opened again as the new version won't download and give me the infamous "No connection could be made becuase the target machine refused it" message. After some internet searching I went back to 1.6 and now all as well again.

I like the ol' "if it ain't broke..." saying, but still, I'd like to use the most recent version as I do in most programs on my comp. So, some help would be nice.

...and to make it easier; running on a wired network, tried disabling both hardware firewall (on Edimax router that is) and Avast! (with restarts of both firewall and my own machine afterwards) without any sucess.

[DreadWingKnight]

Did you remove and re-create the firewall rules for uTorrent?

[Shakel]

Well, I just tried that now (Windows Firewall, that is...even though it's disabled on my system from day one) and it didn't help. Other than that I don't have any other firewall running at the moment.

[Switeck]

Does your ISP block/throttle BitTorrent traffic?

...because your error message is typical of ISPs that do.

[nos_slived]

It's likely that the tracker you're connecting to has banned µTorrent 1.7+, due to the recent "mysterious extra data" scare (which is yet to be proven valid). If the ISP was blocking the traffic, 1.6 probably wouldn't work either.

[Ultima]

http://www.slackware.com/torrents/

How does a torrent from here run?

[funchords]

> "No connection could be made becuase the target machine refused it" message.

WSAECONNREFUSED (10061) Connection refused -- this is a Winsock-level error, meaning that it has nothing to do with banning version 1.7+. This message means that no connection was ever made, so the distant endpoint would have never had the chance to find out what version of uTorrent you were using. Your connection attempt most likely did reach the endpoint and was passed through the firewalls, but it was rejected at the network level as no service was handling traffic at the destination's port.

My strongest hunch is that you're a victim of circumstantial timing -- that the tracker has been intermittently unavailable and every time you've tried with version 1.7.2, the tracker has not answered.

PS: If a firewall issue was involved, the error you would most likely get would be a timeout. If the tracker was rejecting 1.7.2, you would get an error message from the tracker itself, and not from the network level.

[BangMePlz]

I too have had this on a coupla torrents, but have noticed that I am not connected to any seeds, even though it shows there are many. Tried restarting torrent, after deleting of course, and tracker works fine, until you get all the file you can, because of no seeds, and then when it updates tracker, you get that message. This might not help those of us looking for answers or the rest of the file, but maybe the techie types can make use of this info.

[Shakel]

Well, sorry about the late response. I'm a soldier in the IDF so I don't get home much and didn't get to check BT again for a while.

So, in reply to your various suggestions;

It can't be the ISP - as someone else said, in the case 1.6 wouldn't've worked either.

The Slackware ISOs don't work. In 1.6 they work just fine, though.

About the "circumstantial timing" suggestion - well, I've changed versions back and forth in a matter of minutes, checking the same trackers, so that won't be it.

One thing I'm kind of sure about is that the error is local to my machine or my network. The error message pops up literally as soon as I open uTorrent, so I doubt it got to actually reach my ISP/the tracker. The thing is, I can't seem to think about anything that could do that. I do seem to have this problem with other programs now, btw. New versions of eMule, my Kasparsky anti-virus, all seem to have various connection problems. Then again, I don't have an firewall running, and the Edimax router I'm using has it's firewall disabled as well.

Any more ideas?

[Firon]

Give us a process list with HijackThis. Also, firewall blocking actually tends to give this particular error, not timeouts.

[Shakel]

A nifty little tool, that HijackThis is.

Playing with it for a few minutes, I found I had the main file of a previous installation of ZoneAlarm running in the background (vsmon.exe). How I missed that looking in the regular process explorer is behind me, but either way, I got rid of the incomplete installation and all seems well. Thanks for the help!