Windows Vista VPN Error

When I try to connect to VPN on my Vista PC I click on “Connect To” and the VPN connection has a cross next to it and an error that reads “This connection requires an active Internet Connection”. For ages I have just been using a workaround that involves going into “Manage Network Connections” and connecting from there instead but it was getting on my nerves and after about 15 minutes of trying I managed to resolve the problem for myself and I have to be honest involved some luck in finding a hidden menu bar.

Instructions:

• Open the control panel

  

  Hidden network menu bar and advanced settings dalog

• Click Network and Internet, click Network and Sharing Center, and then click Manage network connections.
  OR if you are using Classic View
  Click Network and Sharing Center, and then click Manage network connections.

• Open the Organize menu option and select Layout and then menu bar (This was the hidden bit. Did you know there was a menu bar?).

• You should now see a menu bar with an Advanced menu item. Click on the Advanced Settings item from the Advanced menu.
• In the Adapters and Bindings tab make sure that Local Area Connection is at the top. The chances are if you have installed the Loopback Adapter or virtual machine software (Sun  xVM Virtualbox in my case) then that adapter is the top one.
• Reboot PC and try again.

This post is on my blog to remind myself how I got around the problem but I would be really interested to hear if this worked for you or even if it didn’t as your experience might help others.

** WARNING **
I noticed today (7th July 2009) that the jZip installer seems to have changed and it is easy to get extra items such as the Yahoo toolbar installed and your web browser default page changed when you might not want it be. I still consider the application to be good but I do not appreciate the way the installer works so have removed the download link from this post.

In the past I have offered 7-Zip as an alternative to people but the user interface seems to put them off.

7-Zip is certainly an excellent compression tool but when offered the choice I think most people just want to quickly compress the file and aren’t actuallty worried if program A provides 10% better compression over program B. People feel more comfortable with WinZip and so 7-Zip is often put to one side.

jZip GUI

Today, I installed a program called jZip which they claim is based on 7-Zip technology but it has a nicer GUI. jZip can create and extract from zip, tar, gzip and 7zip file formats and I like the ability to extract from RAR and ISO formats as well (I now don’t need to install an ISO reader). Licensing is really simple – it’s free (they have stated they would like to keep it free) and there is only one version (no jZip Pro, jZip enterprise or jZip Express versions!) so for the majority of people I deal with there is no longer any reason to use WinZip.