RRAS persistent demand-dial connection fails on system startup, butworks afterwards

Hi

I have a PPTP VPN connection to a server on a remote LAN which is the DC
for my Active Directory.

However when I start up the machine the connection does not run. If I
log into the machine using a local account and check the status of the
connection in RRAS manager it shows "unreachable" with error 628 - "the
connection was terminated by the remote computer before it could be
completed".

However if I then click "connect" within the RRAS manager the connection
works, which tells me that the settings for the VPN itself can't be
wrong (can it?).

Is there a service (perhaps the protected storage service, for
passwords?) which needs to start before the RRAS service in order for
the connection to work correctly? If so, I suppose it's possible to
modify the dependencies of the service?

Incidentally, I appreciate this isn't an ideal way to go about the
connection but I only need this to work for a temporary measure for a
few days.

Both machines are Windows 2003, although SP1 isn't applied (due to
issues we've had regarding the Active Directory under SP1). All other
appropriate security updates are installed.

Thanks

Geoff

More information - the server reports:

The user DOMAIN\Username connected to port VPN5-126 has been
disconnected because no network protocols were successfully negotiated.

[obviously DOMAIN and Username are replaced]

Why would the VPN protocol settings be incorrect on startup but work
when "connect" is initiated manually?

Cheers

Geoff


I wrote:

> Hi
>
> I have a PPTP VPN connection to a server on a remote LAN which is the DC
> for my Active Directory.
>
> However when I start up the machine the connection does not run. If I
> log into the machine using a local account and check the status of the
> connection in RRAS manager it shows "unreachable" with error 628 - "the
> connection was terminated by the remote computer before it could be
> completed".
>
> However if I then click "connect" within the RRAS manager the connection
> works, which tells me that the settings for the VPN itself can't be
> wrong (can it?).
>
> Is there a service (perhaps the protected storage service, for
> passwords?) which needs to start before the RRAS service in order for
> the connection to work correctly? If so, I suppose it's possible to
> modify the dependencies of the service?
>
> Incidentally, I appreciate this isn't an ideal way to go about the
> connection but I only need this to work for a temporary measure for a
> few days.
>
> Both machines are Windows 2003, although SP1 isn't applied (due to
> issues we've had regarding the Active Directory under SP1). All other
> appropriate security updates are installed.
>
> Thanks
>
> Geoff

I wrote:
> I have a PPTP VPN connection to a server on a remote LAN which is the
> DC for my Active Directory.
>
> However when I start up the machine the connection does not run. If I
> log into the machine using a local account and check the status of the
> connection in RRAS manager it shows "unreachable" with error 628 -
> "the connection was terminated by the remote computer before it could
> be completed".
>
> However if I then click "connect" within the RRAS manager the
> connection works, which tells me that the settings for the VPN itself
> can't be wrong (can it?).

For what it's worth, I had set the retry-on-disconnect time to about 5
seconds, which actually seems to _cause_ the problem: if I set it to 1
minute the connection works on retry.

It seems from errors in the event log that there was a problem with DHCP
failures - perhaps DHCP client doesn't get a chance to start up if RRAS
has to keep retrying. Seems a little bizarre to me that you can get such
a race situation but (since it now works) I can't think of any other
explanation.

Might be useful to someone, anyway.

Geoff