Topic: More PPTP findings

[Bill Talcott]

I messed with the VPN stuff a bit today, since we have a remote office that could really use it...  I tried connecting via my PC on the LAN behind the e-smith, both through it and through the PC's own modem.  In both, it would connect, then immediately disconnect within a few seconds.  I'm running 98SE with DUN 1.4, and ZoneAlarm Pro.  I found http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=10897.msg41129#msg41129 to have some interesting info on ZA...

I tried connecting from another PC here.  I didn't logon to our domain (separate NT4 server for that), but used the LAN internet connection to use the VPN, and logged onto the domain through that.  This worked great, giving me access to domain-only shared resources.

The 98SE PC may be disconnecting for one of two reasons.  It could be ZoneAlarm, as others seem to have problems with it.  Or it could be that the domain server still saw my hostname being used on the network, even though I did disconnect the patch cable from the computer.  I'll do some more testing when I have time, and with my PC from home...

If it turns out that it is ZoneAlarm, Tiny Personal Firewall is another option.  I haven't messed around with it much, but it's supposed to be comparable in both features and ease of use, and it's still free.  I know for a fact that many other "personal firewalls" out there are flawed and/or very complicated to use, though they do seem to be getting better.  Steve Gibson can sensationalize things a bit, but he does have a lot of good info on this stuff at grc.com.

[Prab Gill]

Well, I had similar problems with my Windows 98 workstation. Whenever I tried to connect to E-smith through PPTP connection, it will connect and then disconnect immediatley.

Sometimes, I could see error message "No connection ports available.." appearing on E-smith console. But some times, no errors on E-smith console, but would still disconnect PPTP connection.

The problem got fixed when I installed Windows ME, now it connects without any problem.

So my good guess is that Windows 98 DUN is not compatible with E-smith.

[Michael Vineburg]

Hi,

Two points I found when trying to get VPN working successfully with E-smith 4.1.1
and win98 SE.

Point 1:

I am using Zonealarm. I added the IP ADDRESS of the remote computer into my local zone properties of Zone Alarm ( eg .10.10.10.91).

Point 2:

I found that I would be disconnected after successfully making a VPN connection. However, once I applied the 128 Encryption upgrade from Microsoft problem was immediately fixed.

I hope these two suggestions might be helpful.

Michael Vineburg

[Gary Barnett]

Hi.

I'm a e-smith newb.  Here's my 2 cents on the "quick" disconnect problem using Win 98SE.  I agree with Michael the 128 bit encrypt is required.  I had the same problem on multiple 98SE machines (ZoneAlarm was NOT involved).  I updated to 128 and it now works fine.

Here's the MS link to get the update:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/win98SE/Update/17648/W98/
EN-S/dun14-SE.exe

Hope this solves your problem.

Gary

[Prab Gill]

Thanks friends.
It is the DUN in Win 98 SE which needs to be updated in order to successfully conect through PPTP.

Regards,
Prab Gill

[Bill Talcott]

I just found this thread again, and have some more info to add to it.  As the original post stated, I had already installed DUN 1.4 and it still didn't work.  I believe that uninstalling Zone Alarm fixed the problem, though it was a while ago and I don't remember for sure. I'm now using Tiny Personal Firewall. I finally tried it, and I find it to be both easier and more powerful than ZA Pro.

Something got me messing with the VPN stuff again today, and it didn't work at first, still disconnecting after a couple seconds. Shutting down TPF didn't help. Just for the heck of it, I ran the DUN 1.4 upgrade again, and now it works great, with TPF running. I also started messing with VPN from a Win95 PC without success, but it's giving me registry errors and I think I might have screwed up some of its VPN files or something. Pretty sure it's just another Windows problem...

Hope this helps someone...

[Bill Talcott]

I removed and reinstalled all the networking stuff on the Win95 PC, and that works great now too. Tried it from my XP box (upgraded from 2k) at home, and that worked without any problems as well.