Windows 7 blocking ports?

[boredombulker]

OK, so I have tried everything I can think of. I had mcafee, opened ports didnt work. uninstalled it. opened ports in windows firewall, didnt work. turned it off. I have uverse gateway so I opened ports in that, didnt work. set to DMZ mode. nothing works. no firewall installed except windows firewall which is turned off. gateway is set to dmz, i thought the gateway was issue so I just had it replaced with new one yesterday. weird thing is that I was able to open two ports in my gateway and mcafee and they were working but it wouldnt let me open any others. I just got an ssd so I did a fresh install of windows on that drive and now using the same setup it wont open any ports. weird... nothing in the router changed at all. only the hdd to an ssd. unfortunately I have uverse so I cannot remove the gateway from the picture. All I can do is set it to dmz. I says my pc, firewall disabled. and it has already been replaced. I don't think it is the gateway. it really seems like windows is some how blocking ports. any help? I am using several port checking websites to check the ports and also have tried the actual application to see if I can access it and I can not. It was working before the switch. Oh, side note. I have a security camera dvr on the same network. I have to open ports in the gateway to that dvr to access the camera on my phone. The ports opened in the gateway for the camera work just fine. but not the one I open for this pc. So again that tells me it is not the gateway.

UPDATE: I was using windows 7 ultimate and thought maybe it was just that copy of windows causing the problem so I got a copy of 7 home premium and reinstalled a fresh copy on the SSD. Upon startup, I have NOT installed anything. No mcafee nothing. Went straight to trying to open the ports and it says they are still closed. I created specific rules in the windows firewall for inbound and outbound on the required ports but they will not open even if I turn it off.

please help anyone?

the ports I am trying to open are

32400 (for plex)

3389 (remote desktop)

8866(NextPVR)

 

[boredombulker]

wow.... I can't believe after 10+ hours of searching and several installs of windows I found out that in order for the ports to actually show as "OPEN" the application that uses the port must be RUNNING and listening on the port. I found this out after opening one of my programs trying to use the port and then rescanned the port and all of the sudden it said "OPEN". closed the program and sure enough it said the port was closed. I have not been able to find anywhere on the internet that says this. This could probably solve so many port forward questions on these forums if SOMEONE would explain that the program has to actually be running for a port scanner to see the port as open. I will post this on all of my posts in regards to this matter, hopefully it will help someone else in the future.