I've had some trouble getting my application to run today - in particular, I could not connect my browser to the Aware login page at http://localhost:8080/AwareIM/logonAdmin.html, the connection was refused.

I tried everything I could find in documentation and forums including changing the Tomcat port number, opening ports on firewalls and switching off my anti-virus. Still I could not connect.

Internet Explorer finally gave me the hint on what the problem was. It said that 'localhost is not set up to establish a connection'.

Some Googling revealed the following solution to my problem on Experts Exchange -

"The solution is removing the next line in the windows host file C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

::1 localhost

This is an IpV6 entry. Put a # in front of it. "

Instead of commenting this IpV6 entry adding the following IpV4 entry above this line also helps:

127.0.0.1 localhost

or

Commented out the line

::1 LocalHost

with a # in the hosts file and it now works.

This update caused this:
Definition Update for Windows Defender - KB915597 (Definition 1.53.256.0)

It caused a removal of the IP mapping to localhost in the hosts file located in
C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\

You should include this line to the hosts file:
127.0.0.1 localhost"

Once I entered the line above in my hosts file, the connection worked as normal.

A connection problem which appeared to be very much an Aware issue proved to be a Windows Vista problem, resolved as above.

I'm posting this in the hope of helping some other individual as frustrated as I was in being unable to connect to an application which had been working fine till the day before.

Hope it helps.

Peter