Hello, everyone. I’ve got a Meraki VPN that I use regularly, connecting to my Japanese office virtual private network from Mac and iOS devices. I am in San Diego after a year and a half away, and my wife arrives tomorrow. I wanted to set up the windows PC we have here to connect to my network back in Japan, which should allow her to watch Netflix or Amazon prime with proper Japanese subtitles. (Her English is not too good…)
Imagine my surprise when I discovered that, much as windows has improved over the past decade, it is still in the dark ages when it comes to setting up something as simple as a VPN. I’m getting the “the network connection between your computer and the VPN server could not be established because the remote server is not responding“ error, which seems to be in error 809. I thought it might be something I needed to open up on my router, but then the VPN works perfectly for all of the devices I have at home, so it has to be something inside the windows PC.
I brought up the old firewall control panel with the run command wf.msc, and tried to open ports 500 and 4500 for TCP or UDP, but nothing is working. Can anyone tell me a) how I can open up the ports required for the VPN to work on a windows 10 computer and b) whether people think it appropriate that Windows should still be this hard to use? I feel like I’m trying to set up a windows 95 box for dial-up, this is so frustrating.
I mean you’re also using a Meraki VPN.
Are you getting the login prompt?
If not, check the VPN type is L2TP/IPsec with pre-shared key and Unencrypted password (PAP) is set as required? The Windows VPN client doesn’t set those as default.
Yeah Windows 10 sucks for VPNs. It is the OS that gives me more support issues than any other OS. It’s also why I run Windows 7 still in the VM on my Linux machine.
What often works when clients have issues connecting to VPNs on Windows 10 is to reset the network settings. That solves the issue in 80% of the cases. The other 20% involves looking in the registry and changing settings. 5% need a complete reinstall of the system.
Since you only need it for a little time, use a VPN with a free 7 days unlimited trial. MOST providers already provide that. You don’t have to look too hard.
Your VPN is for watching video or play games in other regions?
If it is for privacy reason, we may try a browser based solution that does not need any install. www.aplens.co
I’d rather setup a free Wireguard instance on Oracle cloud rather than having to fix horrible paid OpenVPN clients…
which VPNS are proven to work with Windows 10 for split-tunneling?
I didn’t get any prompt, but according to the way I set it up in iOS and Mac OS I would have already entered that info accurately. I’ll try some other system that uses a client and see if that helps.
Microsoft uses their own MS-CHAP password encryption and that may be causing the issue. Here’s a link to Windows 10 to Meraki VPN setup.
Thanks, will save and check into it!