I'm trying to connect to a VPN server (2003) with a Windows 7 installation. Here are some relevant facts* I can connect to the VPN server with XP and Vista, over the same ISP and from behind the same router.* When I make the connection in Windows 7, the computer thinks it's connected (there are no errors and the tray icon says I'm connected).* When I run ipconfig /all, the values returned are reasonable except that there is no "Connection-specific DNS suffix" or "Physical Address" for the the PPP adapter.* I can't ping the DNS server by IP address. The error returned is "General Failure"* ping -a xxx.yyy.zzz.ttt does show the name of the computer I'm pinging.* I tried disabling the firewall andturning off IPv6 to no avail.Does anyone have any ideas of how I might debug this situation?thanks,marco

Hi Marco, Thank you for posting. Please try the following: 1. Go to Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network Connections. 2. Right-click the VPN connection and click Properties. 3. Switch to Networking tab, click Internet Protocol version 4 (TCP/IPv4), and then click Properties. 4. Click Advanced, click to select the Use default gateway on remote network check box, and then click OK. Meanwhile, I suspect you may need to check the DNS settings and I would like to share this document with you: How to configure DNS for Internet access in Windows Server 2003 Hope this helps. Thanks.Nicholas Li - MSFT

Thanks. I've made some progress. If I disable the "use default gateway" I can ping the DNS server using it's IP address which I could not do before. Name resolution is still broken as I can't refer to any computer (even the DNS server) by name. That is (names changed, addresses are real): $ ping -a 169.254.100.2 Pinging foo.bar.com [169.254.100.2] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 169.254.100.2: bytes=32 time=43ms TTL=127 Reply from 169.254.100.2: bytes=32 time=43ms TTL=127 Reply from 169.254.100.2: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=127 Reply from 169.254.100.2: bytes=32 time=43ms TTL=127 $ ping foo Ping request could not find host foo. Please check the name and try again. $ ping foo.bar.com Ping request could not find host foo. Please check the name and try again. Again, I the VPN connection works perfectly under XP and Vista. Any more clues? thanks, marco