Windows – Pidgin getting “Connection Refused” whenever I connect to IRC server

ircpidginwindows 7

On my win 7 x64 machine using pidgin 2.6.3 I cannot connect to any IRC server. I have tried most of the North American servers, as well as my workplace's internal server with no luck. I have tried from work as well as from home but different networks have no effect. I keep getting Unable to Connect: Connection refused.

It work fine 3 weeks ago on this very machine running Win 7 x64. But then I re-imaged, and did not backup my .purple folder. Which I had used for the past 2 years and originally created on a vista install.

I can connect using this install of Pigin to yahoo and msn with no problems. Just not to irc.

Any thoughts?

Best Answer

Maybe it's caused by your firewall?

Win+R, run telnet from there, and enter:

open chat.freenode.net 6667

If it greets you with something like this...

NOTICE AUTH :*** Looking up your hostname...
NOTICE AUTH :*** Checking ident

...then either your firewall is blocking pidgin.exe, or your configuration is incorrect somehow.

If Windows 7 doesn't have telnet anymore (which I heard but cannot confirm), the same thing can be tested with a different IRC client (Xchat, mIRC).

Also try connecting to a different port instead of the usual 6667. (chat.freenode.net allows 8001 among others.)

Related Solutions

IRC Server refusing the connection

Connection refused means, just that. Your server is refusing connections, and its not just you. I can't connect to it either, and pinging it gives me

Pinging bear.freenode.net [78.129.250.51] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 78.129.250.51:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

IRC has other error messages should you be banned such as gline. Its more likely the server is just down, and using the generic freenode domain name -itv.freenode.net (ubuntu's irc domain points at freenode too)is usually a better idea, so you can be pointed to the right server.

That said, if there's a good reason you think you got a server side ban, its a good time to re-examine the error of your ways

Windows – Cannot get HexChat to connect to IRC

It could be that a firewall (your, your router's, your ISP's...) is blocking all IRC connections. (The server shown is currently online.)

Try connecting using the alternate (non-standard) ports – 6665, 6666, 8000, 8001, or 8002. The Hexchat syntax is irc.freenode.net/6665 in the server configuration window, or /server irc.freenode.net 6665 in command line.

Even better, try a SSL-encrypted connection – the standard port is 6697, and freenode also accepts connections on 7000 & 7070. Syntax is the same but with +port; e.g. irc.freenode.net/+6697 (as in the topmost entry of your current server list) or /server irc.freenode.net +6697.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

IRC Server refusing the connection

Windows – Cannot get HexChat to connect to IRC

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