I recently moved to Windows 7 x86 on my laptop. To be completely safe, it is still in dual boot to Windows XP. I have been doing VPN to my work from XP without any issue. In Windows 7, first attempt failed with error 742. Searched net and as suggested in forums, changed to 'Optional encryption'. Now it connectes but gets disconnected in 15 to20 seconds with message popup'Link to VPN Connection failed'. While it is in connection, I am able to ping office servers.There is diagnostics enable link on the popup window but 20 second report is like 50 pages long and I have been trying to find relevant entries without any luck.When I told my problem, a colleague mentioned he has similar problem with Vista but since he is still using XP as primary OS, he is okay with it.I also found someone having ditto problem in the following link click here(user cas1). Solution mentioned by him did not work for me.VPN device in my office is Cisco 3620. Maybe it is few settings in the Cisco end. Hopesomeone has answer to my problem.Thanks.

Hello, Please remove the previous VPN connection and perform the suggestions from the link below to re-setup VPN. VPN Setup However, if the issue persists, please refer to the following steps to collect the Event Log for research. 1. Click "Start", input "eventvwr" (without quotation marks) in the Start Search bar and press Enter. 2. Expand the "Windows Logs" node on the left pane, right-click on "Application" and click "Save All Events As"; in the pop-up window, click to choose the Desktop icon on the left frame, input "app" in the "File name" blank, and then click save. 3. Right click on "System", with the same method, save it as "sys". 4. Locate the two saved log files on the Desktop and upload them to SkyDrive ( www.skydrive.live.com ), and then share the link for me. Thanks, Novak

Thanks for the reply. I followed VPN Setup link you mentioned.Few options are located in different tab in my Windows 7. Since I did not know L2TP preshared key, I left default radio 'User certificate for authentication' selected. When I tried to connect, it gave following error popup -Then I changed type of VPN to PPTP. It gave following error popup-Finally I removed 'Enable Software Compression' from 'PPP Settings'. And I also changed 'Data Encryption' to 'Optional encryption'.Doing so I was able to connect to VPN for 20 seconds and during which time I canping office server. Then in a short while link gets broken with following popup-And here are app.evtx and sys.evtx I uploaded in SkyDrive (I didn't know abt SkyDrive, its cool :) )http://cid-0dfe86a6d019e0f1.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/app.evtx(1.1 MB)http://cid-0dfe86a6d019e0f1.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/sys.evtx(68 KB)Thanks for the efforts.

First, I would like to confirm the following questions: 1. Would you please let me know whether the problem PC is a home PC or a work PC? If it is a work PC, is it in a domain that connects by a router? 2. Can we access Internet normally on the problematic PC? After analyzing the Event log, I found that the error 742 popped up in Event ID 20227. I suggest we temporarily turn off the firewall on the Windows 7 machine and Router (If it has) to check the result. For more information about the error, we can refer to the link below: Event ID 20227 RAS Connection Establishment If the issue still persists, you may contact the network admin or Cisco support since it's a Cisco VPN. For this kind of VPN Server and connection, we cannot ensure that the Windows built-in connection feature is compatible with Cisco VPN (Maybe this is due to some specific settings). Thanks, Novak

Here are answer to your questions.1. The problem is on my laptop which I usually use at home to connect to office servers.2. Yes. Internet is working perfectly in Windows 7.Stopping Windows 7 firewall did not help. It looks like it is at the Cisco end. My system administrators are looking after this issue and they are soon going to enable L2TPapart from PPTP. Hope this will solve the issue.Thanks.

Since the issue persists after turning off Windows 7 firewall, we can conclude that the issue can be caused by incorrector incompatible Cisco VPN settings. Please take some times to contact the Cisco support and system administrators for further assistance. Thanks,Novak