Headless SSH on Raspberry Pi3B: connection refused

Question

Thanks for taking the time and helping me out.

The Aim:

Heedlessly ssh into a Raspberry Pi 3B on my Win7 platform(s).

The problem:

I have two Raspberry Pi 2 B's that I have set up in the past with no issues incl headless setup. I have a new Raspberry Pi 3B and cannot ssh into it at all. I have followed the exact same steps I have for my Pi 2B's with exception to the image.

What I have done so far:

1. Download the latest Raspbian Jessie Image and format the Sd card using Win32DiskImager.

2. Power up the Raspberry

3. Ping the raspberry successfully using the Pi's IP address.

4. Open Putty and enter the IP on port 22 (not that the port should matter)

5. At this point when I try click "Open" after having entered the Pi's IP address I get the following error: "Connection Refused"

6. I then used a Screen and keyboard to boot the Pi 3B. Once booted I opened terminal and entered "sudo raspi-config", where I then enabled SSH manually.

7. I unplugged everything from the Pi3, plugged the LAN cable back into my laptop and Pi3 and powered up the Pi3B.

8. I could still ping the Pi

9. Using Putty and the Pi3B's IP address I then clicked "open" and the following error came up: "Network Error: Software cause connection abort"

EDIT:

I have now also added a router to the setup, checked up what the ip of the pi is through the router and tried connecting with putty onto the pi, but I still get "Network Error: Connection Refused"

I am running out of ideas, any help would be appreciated. Thank you Misha

Solution

After comically large amounts of googling and hassle I found a solution here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/a-security-update-for-raspbian-pixel/

With the RPi3B and 11-01-2017 Raspbian Jessie combo (I dont know with which one the issue lies) one has to add a blank file named "ssh" into the boot directory of the SD card. This can be done on your Windows platform. Ensure that the file has no file extensions, because if it has any file extensions it wont work. Good practice anyway to have your file extensions showing in any case.

Hope this helps anyone else.