Ports closed. Need to reopen.

[Superman]

I ran a utility program and accidentally closed needed ports on my computer. My backup software can't run. How can I open them back up?

[Starglider]

'Closed needed ports' is a bit ambigious. Do you mean 'I'm running Windows Firewall and I accidentally blocked TCP or UDP ports I need?'. If so go to Control Panel -> Windows Firewall (in the classic view) and click 'allow a program through the firewall' on the left hand side. Either tick the box for the program in the list, or if it doesn't appear there use 'add port'.

That said, if you were using Windows Firewall, you should get a 'unblock this program?' option when you run the software anyway. If you're running a different firewall (and you don't know how to use it) then you'll have to look at the appropriate help.

[Superman]

'Closed needed ports' is a bit ambigious. Do you mean 'I'm running Windows Firewall and I accidentally blocked TCP or UDP ports I need?'. If so go to Control Panel -> Windows Firewall (in the classic view) and click 'allow a program through the firewall' on the left hand side. Either tick the box for the program in the list, or if it doesn't appear there use 'add port'.

That said, if you were using Windows Firewall, you should get a 'unblock this program?' option when you run the software anyway. If you're running a different firewall (and you don't know how to use it) then you'll have to look at the appropriate help.

Even I disable the firewall, the program doesn't work. Can ports close or get blocked without a firewall?

[Starglider]

Even I disable the firewall, the program doesn't work. Can ports close get blocked without a firewall?

TCP inbound (server) and UDP ports can only be used by one program at once (on a given network interface). It is possible for this to cause problems even if no firewall is present; for example Skype grabs port 80 inbound if it can, and you can't run a local web server unless you kill Skype first. Some programs with web based management interfaces rely on local port 8080 and run into the same problem. On windows you can show all open TCP connections with the command 'netstat -a', but personally I use CurrPorts, which is a decent freeware GUI tool to do the same thing.

Of course it would be simpler if you actually specified what software you're using.

[Superman]

I'm using Carbnonite. It's an online backup program you can see at www.carbonite.com. This problem started after I ran a security sweep with PC Mechanic. It seems it went a little too far...

[Starglider]

If you can't even see the UI, did you try entering

http://127.0.0.1:668/html/InfoCenter-Status.htm

instead of

http://localhost:668/html/InfoCenter-Status.htm ?