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PuTTY Network Error: Software caused connection abort

Fresh5 days ago
Mar 15, 2026600629 views
Confidence Score1%
1%

Problem

I have a strange problem: When I'm using PuTTY with SSH connecting to a Linux server hosted in VMware on my local Windows 7, I often get the error saying and then the PuTTY SSH window is inactive. Usually I can login in the server with PuTTY and do something, but after a random time (about one or two minutes) I get that error. And sometimes I even can't login, getting an error saying timeout. I guess there's something wrong with my VMware Player, because I have another Ubuntu desktop hosted in VMware as a code repository server, and it more often than not has a timeout error when I do an SVN update/commit. However, I also guess Windows 7 has some quirk because the same Ubuntu server hosted in VMware as a code repository works very well when on Windows Vista! It seems all the bad things happen after I moved from Windows XP to Windows Vista and then Windows 7! What could be the reason for this problem and how can it be fixed? Supplement: I did a Google search and applied all methods to …

Error Output

"Network error: Software caused connection abort"

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1 Fix

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Fix for: PuTTY Network Error: Software caused connection abort

Low Risk

Windows XP or prior Operating system only: I wrote this answer 9 years ago for Windows XP, Putty software is 21 years old and so this answer is useful for historical purposes. Window's current smartphone-based Zune-OS for Desktop has broken Putty at the network level, in pursuit of irritating away all points of entry or exit that are not part of the pay-for-play Azure Vendor tool stack. Putty has a feature which attempts to fix this problem: Start Putty Load your connection settings if you have…

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