My Ports are always Occupied and no Software Shows why (netstat, TCPView)

Question

I have this frustrating Problem that my programs cannot connect to their designated Ports. I'm using a windows 10 machine and this is how my problem goes: I open a software which needs port 5053 or another which needs 50504 and they give me error that this ports are in use: 5053 Error :

Port 5053 in use, waiting...

50504 Error :

An attempt was made to access a socket in a way forbidden by its access permissions

and I can't figure out what is causing this port blockage.

I've used netstat and TCPView and there is no software or process or service that is occupying these ports, and the programs still don't open and their windows services don't start.

• in the log of my programs it gives me the above errors (more importantly the 5053 one).

the only solution that I Could find is to run net stop hns && net start hns and after several trial and error and reloading the services exactly after running this command, they will work.

I'm not a Networking Expert, I don't know much about network fundamentals, and I got my self this far by just google searches and Scrolling forums, but I Can't find the root of this problem and fix it.

I Also Use Firewall (Kaspersky Internet Security) but I've been using it with no such problem for years

If there's anything I need to check and report or any possible cause please inform me.

Answer 1

Thanks you very much guys(@frank-thomas , @harrymc and @daniel-b)
with your help and guidance I Finally could figure out the problem and solutions for fixing it:

Part 1 of Solution

• After I read part of your linked posts, I found out about the Windows Port Exclusion Ranges so I ran the netsh command that was there and Found out how many Exclusion Ranges I had (around 123 Port Exclusion Ranges!!!)

netsh int ip show excludedportrange protocol=tcp

• I asked Bard and ChatGPT what was the normal amount of Port Exclusion Ranges and they told me it varies but usually it's less than 10! and there I understood why I was struggling with this problem for months.

• I found the ports that were giving me errors in the exclusion Ranges

• Then I tried Disabling the Hyper-V to assign my in-use ports in a new exclusion range and then re-enable it, but I found out in my case, it didn't have so much influence on them. but it might be the solution for someone else

Part 2 of Solution

• After that I saw this post that explained which other processes are using these exclusion Ranges and how to disable them (which was the most helpful). for me personally bellow line works when I get the same errors:

(run as administrator) net stop winnat && net start winnat

• Then I saw this comment and I think it might've helped as well by creating a registry to disable the Excluded Port Range

for now, I don't know which one of the solutions in part 2 helped the most, but they certainly fixed my Problem.