MySQL Abruptly Refusing Remote Connections

Question

UPDATE

So I completely disabled my server's firewall and it appears to be the culprit. I had tried to disable certain rules before but disabling the whole thing worked. Very frustrating, but problem solved I guess... I think the key indicator that it was the firewall was because it happened at exactly midnight when my server likes to apply updates and such.

This is pretty strange to me, I have a server downstairs that hosts my websites and MySQL servers and it has been running for years without many issues. I have 2 routers bridged together behind my modem and my server is behind one of them. All other devices connect via WiFi. All of the proper ports are open on the router and I have users configured in MySQL that haven't changed and have been working fine this whole time.

So last night I was working on a project and I decided to sync everything with a backup on my SkyDrive. I have a scheduled backup for MySQL that runs at midnight (daily) and it just turned over to midnight so I decided to open my network and watch the file get populated before I sent a copy to my SkyDrive. After the backup was complete (which it did successfully), I was going to continue to work on my program but all of a sudden I can no longer connect via my local network to the MySQL server. I'm using PHP and my connection string never changed and all other MySQL admin tools don't connect. The live site works fine, so MySQL was definitely running and working but no remote connections were being accepted. Why is this happening all of a sudden?

Things I've tried :

• I did notice that my logs were packed full of BINLOG errors so I turned off the binlog since I recently turned it on (a couple weeks ago).
• Restarting MySQL
• Turning off Windows Server 2008 firewall (temporarily)
• Connecting from a different device (mobile phone, tablet), no luck
• Temporarily allowing port 3306 on my router
• Checked server logs for intrusion attempts, none present...

Setup :

• PHP 5.4 on local machine and server
• Windows Server 2008 Enterprise (on server...)
• MySQL Version 5.5.25a

Does anyone have any clue as to what's going on here? I'm going to reboot my server when the load is low and see if this helps any, I will update this once it comes back online.

Answer 1

So I completely disabled my server's firewall and it appears to be the culprit. I had tried to disable certain rules before but disabling the whole thing worked. Very frustrating, but problem solved I guess... I think the key indicator that it was the firewall was because it happened at exactly midnight when my server likes to apply updates and such.