Well, thanks to the long holidays I finally had time to give the Vista release a spin. For the purpose I used my company laptop – a Lifebook T4210 tablet PC. Since i was tempted to switch to Vista completely and wipe out the old XP, I had to prove that all the tools I need for my job will work. One of the most important was OpenVPN, since this is what we use to access our network.
The straightforward approach (simply installing and running it) did not work, since OpenVPN was failing to adjust my routing table. It uses an API (IPAPI) that does not work, even if I “Run as Administrator” it. Fortunately OpenVPN has an option to set routes by executing route.exe (route-method exe), which does the trick. Also, OpenVPN should be run as Administrator, which ruled out the option of using its own right-click menu “Start OpenVPN on this config file”. What i found works best is:
- Add to your .ovpn file the following two lines:
route-method exe
route-delay 2 - Create a one-line .BAT file to run openvpn on your .ovpn config file like this
“C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\bin\openvpn.exe” [PATH_TO_OVPN_FILE] - To start the VPN, right click on the bat file and choose “Run as Administrator“
Enjoy.
I’m having problems with this – can you type out the command if the location of the ovpn file is in c:\program files\openvpn\config? I keep getting syntax errors. Thanks!
That worked…Thanks!
I am glad I could help. This is what I wrote in an e-mail to jay_dale to solve his problem:
Maybe you forgot to enclose it in “”. Since Program Files has a space in it, it needs quotes
“C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\bin\openvpn.exe” “C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config “
I also had this issue until I applied this fix, (Thank you for all of your hard work) and it worked for about 6 weeks. I would connect to my network from home; Remote desktop to my computer all is good! About 2 weeks ago my vista laptop started losing connection about 2 min into the session. There is a little popup window that says connection lost trying to reconnect 1 of 20 times. The connection is reestablished after the 5th or 6th attempt but keeps dropping out again in about 2 min. I’ve searched and searched and haven’t been able to find any info on this issue. Any help would appreciated.
Rickyse1236