Solved my Dreamweaver CS3 connectivity problems

For the past few months I have been suffering from the dreaded connection problems using Dreamweaver FTP. I have gone through dozens of blogs and dozens of supposed fixes, and saw dozens of recommendations to 'use an external ftp program'. I even uninstalled it and resinstalled it no avail. So I gave up for awhile and started using an external one or just rebooting the system to get Dreamweaver working again. I was convinced that I would have to wipe my OS (WinXP) and reinstall because I thought maybe I screwed up something in the registry.

Here is what was happening:

Dreamweaver would work just fine for awhile (usually half an hour, sometimes longer). Then suddenly, it would start having problems connecting (I couldn't connect to any of the servers in my list). This was happening on both my laptop and my desktop so I knew it had to be something both had in common. The only way I could get Dreamweaver working again was to reboot the system. It would hang on uploading a 62KB file, trying to list the directories, and sometimes it would delete my file from the remote server and then tell me I had to turn on Passive FTP when it was already on, which would cause a 404 error on the server.

So I had this idea that just maybe it was my anti-virus.

I run AVG Anti Virus which is currently on 8.5. If you aren't running AVG, it could still be it so just try this one and see if the problem goes away for you (I know I'm not the only one that has had this problem from the posts I have seen on this):

Open your antivirus control center (for AVG you double-click the AVG icon in your tray).

You need to find the exceptions list. In AVG you click on the tools menu and click on advanced settings. Under Resident shield click on Exceptions.

I added two paths (I'm running Win XP by the way), but the second one is probably what does it:

Path 1: Enter/select the path to Adobe Dreamweaver cs3. On mine it is C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Dreamweaver CS3\

Path 2: This is to the application data folder in your documents and settings under your user account (it might be hidden so you need to change windows settings to show hidden files if you don't see it). The path to mine was: C:\Documents and Settings\Jon\Application Data\Adobe\Dreamweaver 9\

In AVG click on Apply then Ok and close out of it.

It looks like Dreamweaver is working great for me now, and what is really awesome is I got a little bit of a performance boost out the file get and put operations :-)