No, i also whitelisted it from any virtualization and other modules in Comodo.

yep, also only using the portable version now, so there is no shortcut and the exe doesn't have any commandline arguments either.

The NordVPN IP is quite interesting. I did have that VPN installed on my laptop in the past, but at some point had no need for it anymore so uninstalled it with revo uninstaller pro. I just checked again and can't find any obvious traces in my C:/programs etc. either. But I never configured NordVPN with electrum in any way, so why would electrum now try to connect this way?

Also checked network adapters in windows control panel but there are none from NordVPN (or other VPNs).

EDIT: I solved it! There were no other VPN network adapters, but I found 2 from VMware and 1 from virtualbox. Once I disabled both VMware adapters, electrum was able to connect again immediately. If I turn the adapters back on and restart electrum, it doesn't connect anymore, this is reproducable.

I'm glad I finally fixed this with all you guys' help, but why would electrum try to prioritize and connect via a vmware network adapter instead of just the normal ethernet?

Unfortunately I don't have any recent restore points. Disk quite full, last one would be more than a year ago...

I checked the firewall logs, and I see lots of outgoing UDP connections from Electrum to 162.242.211.137, regardless of what server I manually select. Is that normal?

Also, when I try to check for updates from within Electrum, the update check fails with "Sorry, but we were unable to check for updates. Please try again later." - that really looks like something is blocking electrum completely. I found out my windows firewall was still activate despite having comodo firewall, but turning it off didn't help either.

Asked a friend to install electrum (whom I know uses comodo AV + firewall, too - confirmed he is running same version as me, including same settings), electrum connects right away on his machine. So it doesn't seem to be this either.

What else could be blocking the connection?

No problems with any other app, website etc. Not behind a VPN. Disabled and turned off Comodo, no difference.

Installed electrum on android phone and made new wallet, network shows 9 connections immediately. Used Wifi (so same router as the one my laptop uses), hence it must be something on my laptop.

yes, of course.

Ugh, I don't think so.

I don't have another laptop and i'm not putting any crypto stuff on my mobile (i don't trust mobiles). I use comodo internet security (both antivirus + firewall, but all electrum files are whitelisted in both already).

I have a problem since several days, Electrum showing the red icon in the lower right and doesn't want to connect to any server.

Running 3.3.8 since it came out in July. Back then it worked fine and nothing on my laptop config has changed since then.

What I've tried so far:
- tried all different electrum versions (portable, installer etc.), same result for each
- whitelisted in firewall
- deleted the file blockchain_headers
- tried to manually connect to the servers that are available inside the software, as well as those listed at https://1209k.com/bitcoin-eye/ele.php
- have been waiting a good 10 mins between trying new servers
- above issues are both for NO proxy and with proxy

It feels like I tried everything there is to try. It doesn't make sense that 3.3.8 would work fine for me a few weeks ago and now it doesn't since days.

Any other ideas?