I hope this helps. Since I downloaded the 1.3 v I cannot CHMOD either. And I know my server is fully capable. Something has changed. At first, I looked at XP sp2, Firewall settings, etc. Still no go.
You are correct. I uploaded a tar file to my server, but did not realize the chown was not set correctly. So I changed the chown to the user (me) and all is well.
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I hope this helps others.