The setup:
- The VPN servers are a MS 2003 Server Standard, MS 2008 Standard, Softlayer's VPN where I maintain servers for various companies.
- VMware Workstation 9 running on Windows 8
- XP VM set up bridged (See attached pic for bridged setup)
- XP on bare metal
The Situation:
This is a very vanilla setup. They all use the Microsoft client, and all three use the exact same VPN setups. The Windows 8 and XP bare metal connect fine to anywhere. In fact both can each do multiple VPN sessions at the same time with the same an different VPN hosts. They work fine both wireless and wired, so there are definitely no router issues. The XP VM is set up exactly the same as the bare metal, but none of the VPN connections work even if the Windows 8 and XP bare metal are not in sessions at all. They are all connected to the same network, and when doing a net view, they all see each other. The VM has no problem surfing the internet or syncing with mobile devices. Even with the VM and Windows 8 firewall and AV off, the VM hangs on verifying user name and password. It will eventually timeout with a 619 Error. (See attached pic for error) The XP VM was a P2V of a previous admin machine, so all of the VPN connections worked while bare metal, and perhaps until a Workstation update. I tried re-setting up a connection from scratch, but that didn't work either. Other things I've tried were turning off all guest network adapters except for the VMware Local Area Network connection, turning off the VMware adapters on the host, and changing the MTU from 1500 to 1300. None of these changes made any difference to the VPN behavior of the host or guest. Since all hosts and guests browse, get E-Mail, and sync with mobile devices, an only the bare metal OSes can do VPN, this is a Workstation Problem.
Edit 1: In addition to the XP 32 bit guest, I subsequently tried Windows 7 64 and Windows 8 64 Guests on the same host, and they also return the same 619 error. This has to be a Workstation problem.
Edit 2: I remembered we have another computer in house running Workstation 6.5 with XP as the host. Its Windows 2000 guest connects VPN no problem. This confirms my aforementioned suspicion that the guest VPN connections worked fine until Workstation was migrated to a later version.
Edit 3: Did are restore to defaults in the Virtual Network Editor, and reset up everything. I also deleted all networks except the bridged network. I reinstalled VMware Tools. None of this helped.