I’ve had some trouble connecting to a new FTP server today from my Vista computer. Here’s are some steps to check if you are getting the “An Error Occurred opening that folder on the FTP server” error message.
- Ensure that Port 21 is open in your Vista Firewall.
- Check to see if you can connect to the server using active mode.
- Open command prompt
- Type ftp and press enter
- type open sitename.com and press enter
- Enter your name and password as prompted
- Type dir and press enter. If you see the directory structure of the FTP server then you know that you can connect.
- Type close and press enter
- Type quit and press enter
- Change settings in IE 7 (I only tested this fix with IE7)
- Under the Advanced tab in IE Tools\Options
- Uncheck the “Use Passive FTP (for firewall and DSL modem…) checkbox
- Check the “Enable FTP folder view (outside of Internet Explorer” checkbox
Mapping FTP drives
I found this slightly non-intuitive too. You have to map a drive to the FTP server in order to preserve the settings of the server.
- Open Windows Explorer
- Choose Tools\Map Network Drive menu
- Click the “Connect to a Web site that you can use… ” link.
- Follow the instructions
-Walt Ritscher
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The OLD approach allowed you to use FTP://
instead of HTTP:// to get into remote systems.
Vista still does allow this, but to open the Page
in an explorer type drag/drop window, you have to
use the PAGE dropdown (to the left of Tools in the
right hand part of the browser screen)
But simpler, just open the FTP site using My Computer
This works in Vista and in XP and probably earlier
versions of Windows.
To set “Passive” mode, and to allow or disallow opening
FTP sites check the tools/internet options settings
in the browser.
In any case,
Open My Computer
Type in ftp://some-ftp-site
Answer the user/password popup box questions
See the folders
This also works in other versions of Windows, but so
did the MSIE approach, which no longer works in
Vista unless you know to use “Page” when you get
to the FTP site to open the site in the
Thanks, this was very useful, hopefully Vista’s handling of FTP movements is better than in XP…
I found this page because I was having difficulty editing my website from a new wireless Vista laptop and rescued Ethernet cabled PC with a clean XP install both of which are strangers to me. My problem on both machines was that I could connect to the remote server but the ftp client kept hanging on “refreshing folder”.
I tried Walt’s suggestions but although I could connect to the remote server I couldn’t get a list of directories and files. Anyway I persevered with the ftp client, Terrapin FTP, and got in touch with their support at http://www.tpin.com/. The problem was quickly resovled because it was a firewall issue – not those installed on the machines, Norton’s 360 and AVG, but that on the Orange Live box. By temporarily disabling the livebox firewall I can connect to the remote server and easily transfer files, etc in a GUI that I am used to using on older operating systems.
The software is not very expensive and the email support was within a working day.
Thanks for writing this, saved me a lot of time to try and figure this out.
Thanks for the post. Very helpful.
Great! Thanks
Why in the WORLD would one want to use FTP to access files in this manner?
ftp can be used to manage websites within the windows explorer
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Thanks a lot! Using FTP in Vista was non-existent for me till now.