That's what people who had the same problme said, hope that it will work for you.
I had same problem when I reloaded windows os,just says connecting and thats all,but as luck would have it. I had my shared folder on a second drive,not on the default ares folder I do this to have more space for my downloads.What happens is as soon as I changed folder from ares default to my second drive,which of course I named ares shared folder,restarted ares and as soon as it started loading my downloads ares connected online,tried this with my mates pc,taking my drive to his pc,dragging and dropping into his newly created ares shared folder,again not ares default,and ares connected onlline,only tried this the two times,hope it works for you.
Yes, try to put it with the filed Ares. If it does not work, you try this:
1-Open ARES and wait a moment....
2-After it says connecting for a little while go to control panel and disconnect....
3-Wait about 30 sec and connect again
after doing this it sholud connect and work right... if not just do 2 and 3 a couple more times...
Try this one:
Go into Ares control panel and click on transfer, there's a box saying what port to use. Delete that number then close ares down, then reload ares and a different port number would have been found, then ares will start working.