You Can Finally Connect to a VPN on Windows Again
If you installed the latest Windows Server update last week, you might have noticed something annoying – your VPN was not connecting to Windows . The issue is mainly related to the Windows VPN client, but affects several VPN devices such as SonicWall, WatchGuard firewalls, and Cisco Meraki. If you uninstalled these updates or just avoided updates after hearing the news, you’ll be happy to know that Microsoft has finally fixed the bug.
It seems that this bug mostly affected machines running Windows 10 and Windows 11 after the update that Microsoft released on January 11th . Because these updates were part of the first Patch Tuesday of 2022, they didn’t set a good tone for Microsoft this year. ( As one Reddit user elegantly put it : “For the sake of Microsoft, damn it.”)
Speaking of Reddit, we first became aware of this issue through the site’s r/sysadmin. User In_Gen reported updates KB5009543 and KB5008876 and how those versions broke VPN support for two Windows 10 laptops. After the updates were removed, their VPNs reconnected, showing that the bug was inherently due to new Microsoft patches.
While the VPN issue is reportedly related to Windows 10 and Windows 11, today Microsoft has released fixes for almost all supported versions of Windows, including Windows 7. These updates address issues other than VPN connectivity and may vary depending on the version of Windows . re-works. You may see a combination of the following fixes:
- Addresses a known issue that could cause IP Security (IPSEC) connections that contain a vendor ID to fail. VPN connections that use Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) or Internet Key Exchange (IPSEC IKE) may also be affected.
- Addresses an issue that may prevent mounting of removable media formatted with Resilient File System (ReFS) or may cause removable media in the RAW file format to be mounted. This issue occurs after installing the January 11 Windows Update.
- Addresses a known issue that may cause Windows servers to restart unexpectedly after installing the January 11 update on domain controllers (DCs).
- Addresses an issue that prevents Active Directory (AD) attributes from being written properly during a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) change operation when multiple attribute changes are made.
How to Install the Windows VPN Patch
If the update is available on your computer, select Start > Settings > Windows Update (Windows 11) or Start > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update (Windows 10). Once on this page, you can check for available updates.
If today’s update is missing, you can manually download it from the XDA Developers site. You can also use this page as a resource to see if you have the correct update; check your Windows version and see if the update name matches on your end. For example, the Windows 11 VPN fix is called KB5010795 – if you don’t see it on your Windows 11 PC, you’d better download the update manually.
[ XDA Developers ]