I am getting "Could not start a new session" error even though appium server is running

[jvrensburgg]

This is my first time posting so if I have left anything I apologize up front

I have been running mobile automated test on Android for a while now but today my test are failing with the “org.openqa.selenium.remote.UnreachableBrowserException: Could not start a new session. Possible causes are invalid address of the remote server or browser start-up failure.” error in the eclipse console. No activity on the appium server.

The error implies that the server is not running but I have started the server and it is using the same port 4723 that is defined in my common class. For some reason it is not finding the server.

The only thing that has changed is that they have upgraded my Windows 10 to version 1709. Could this have caused the problem?

I started the server
[Appium] Welcome to Appium v1.6.5
[Appium] Appium REST http interface listener started on 0.0.0.0:4723

Testing framework
Cucumber tests
JUnit runner
maven build
Java code
Eclipse IDE

Any ideas or suggestions on how to solve this will be greatly appreciated.

[wreed]

The only thing that has changed is that they have upgraded my Windows 10 to version 1709. Could this have caused the problem?

Yes, absolutely. No idea what the change is, but I’m going to suggest you take a look at the Windows 10 firewall:

https://www.google.com/search?q=configuring+windows+10+firewall&oq=configuring+windows+10+fire&aqs=chrome.0.0j69i57j0l4.6141j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

[jvrensburgg]

Thank you for the assistance. It did solve my problem but I did learn how to open ports on the firewall.

The real problem is that we used “loopback” or local-only interface (0.0.0.0) in the URL (“http://0.0.0.0:4723/wd/hub”). This no longer works on my machine. Whether it was the windows upgrade or a group policy that was applied I don’t know but I do know that I now have to use 127.0.0.1 in the URL (“http://127.0.0.1:4723/wd/hub”).