Chrome can't open localhost:3000 with Gulp/BrowserSync

For some reason, no matter what I try, Google Chrome doesn't seem to be able to display http://localhost:3000 (or any other port number specified) when the server is started using BrowserSync via Gulp .

Navigating to the same URI in Firefox shows that it works and BrowserSync is connected .

gulp.task('browser-sync', function() {
    browserSync.init({
        server: {
            baseDir: './'
        },
        port: 8080
    });
});

I specified 8080the above port as an alternative , but even using the default port 3000doesn't work in Chrome. Firefox seems to work with either.

I went to: chrome://net-internals/#dns and cleared host cache, rebooted etc. Nothing works.

In Chrome I only get the following message:ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED

Any ideas? thanks.

PS - also works in Safari.