it worked fine for a while...now it won't.

i intalled smartFTP on my computer just after i got it, and it worked fine, just dandy. now, a few days ago, i go to jump on a friend's FTP site, and it won't work. i tried some others that i use, and neither did they. i've tried toggling between active and passive, and i even pinged my friend's site and had him check whether i was getting through to him, and i apparently was.

but nothing. and i didn't change anything in smartFTP, as far as i know.

my friend mentioned something about my firewall being a problem, so i disabled it, but that did nothing.

i'm at my wit's end, here. the only things i can think of is that i recently installed adaware and spybot on my comp, but i've barely touched them, and i don't know why they would affect anything.

i just can't get through to FTP's, and i keep getting the

"No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it"

notice. but i'm not banned or anything.

somebody help! and be gentle. i'm a total computer novice.

thanks,
tony

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edited to say: i also tried the archive and game sites in the "favorites" section, and all of them gave me that "no connection..." stuff. i tried this with my firewall enabled and disabled.

Probably too many others trying to log into the server or the server set not to accept connections at the moment. Leave it for a bit and try again.

HTH

no, read my post again, i think you missed the part where i said that i tried other sites, too.

i talked to my friend, and he didn't know why i wasn't getting in. none of these other ftp's are letting me in, either.

Sorry - yes I had missed that.

Hmm. Actively refused usually means just that...you got through but the server rejected your advances. Furthermore, if it's a password problem there's usually an explicit message. And you're getting the same message from each site?

a) Can your friend FTP to the sites in question?
b) When your firewall's taken out of the equation can you FTP from the command prompt/console?

(Incidentally, we use Ad-Aware here and it hasn't impacted SmartFTP. Dunno about SpyBot though)

I have had the same issue. After reading posts here and for my ADSL router/firewall, I decided to disable the Internet sharing in XP Pro.

Guess what... that was it!! Strangely enough it seems to work with Build 978 and not the latest version. Hope this helps.