I've been having a rather odd problem with Windows Vista - when I connect to a VPN using the MS VPN client Vista will hang - i.e. the Task Manager will not come up, ctrl-alt-delete has no effect, windows explorer and all other apps stop responding, and I have to power off to get back to a working state. On restart no errors are reported in the event log. Any ideas on how to troubleshoot an irksome problem like this?

I have just had very similar problem. I logged on to the office vpn this morning and as soon as I tried to access a network drive everything froze. ctrl-alt-del did nothing and I had to power off. I've tried this three times with the same results.Mapping drives seemed to work but typing the network drive path into the explorer bar led to an immediate freeze. I tried setting the drive up as a network place but this also triggered a freeze.As far as I know nothing has changed since last week when it was working okay though there does seem to be some problem with my display drivers which is also new. It may be unrelated.(I am using a Lenovo T61p with Vista Ultimate).

That is very interesting - I also have a T61 with Vista Business. Mine is a 6459CTO. I have already tried rebuilding the machine two or three times and I think the issue might be (oddly) related to having at one point installed Blackberry software 4.3. Did you by chance also install that software at any point?

Hi, Please understand that Microsoft provides different support services which have different service levels and support boundaries. For system hang issues, it is necessary to debug the related crash dump files or the freezing systems to locate the root cause. Also, in most cases, it is necessary to check the source codes as well. Unfortunately, debugging is out of our Forum support boundary. I'd like to recommend that you contact Microsoft Customer Support Service (CSS) for assistance, they are the best resource for this kind of issue. To obtain the phone numbers for specific technology request please take a look at the website listed below: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;PHONENUMBERS Before that, you can also perform a clean boot in Windows Vista to check the result. For your reference, I've listed a relative article as below: How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vistahttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135/en-us Hope it helps.