I’m currently working on a project where I set up a Raspberry Pi to host a VPN server so that I can let my extended family view some private pictures. I previously had a PritUNL server running on Digital Ocean with a remote mLab MongoDB server, but it didn’t seem to work too well, with connections getting dropped and some serious compatibility issues. PritUNL does, however, have a very nice interface and supposedly better resource usage than OpenVPN Access Server, the limited-to-two-concurrent-users OpenVPN solution I was using before.
My current setup had a PritUNL client (running unknown in the background) and a SecurePoint client on Windows 10, with OpenVPN on my RPi set up through PiVPN. The SecurePoint client was very easy to use, and it worked when I ran it. After testing that it worked, I hibernated my PC and went to work. And that’s when things went wonky.
When I opened up my PC, I saw three WiFi networks, the SSIDs that are from my house. There’s no way those things would be available at work. No other network was available. I knew it had to be something to do with my VPN software, so I uninstalled those and rebooted.
The problem persisted. I looked online, and it showed me that Windows 10 used to have a bug where old, unsupported VPNs (Cisco) would cause some internet connection issues. So I ran the fix for that (using cmd.exe in admin mode):
reg delete HKCR\CLSID\{988248f3-a1ad-49bf-9170-676cbbc36ba3} /f
netcfg -v -u dni_dne
And the problem persisted. I searched some more and ran a number of ipconfig and netsh commands. Finally, I found this page from Microsoft with some handy netsh tools:
netsh wlab show wlanreport – creates a report of the current wlan setup/status accessible at C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WlanReport
netsh -d – resets all network configurations and settings, but MS recommends it only as a last resort
Basically, netsh -d worked, but it also erased all my WiFi profiles. I played around with netsh some more, and I learned you can export current profiles using this command: netsh wlan export profile folder=c:\WifiProfiles\, which sends the profiles to C:\WifiProfiles. It’s not very intuitive, or maybe because I only had one profile, but it would seem that netsh wlan export profile name="George's iPhone" folder=c:\WifiProfiles\ should have worked, but it sends me this error: Profile "George's iPhone" is not found on any interface.
Once you backup your profiles like this, you can probably use netsh wlan add profile filename="ProfileName.xml" interface="Wireless Network Connection" user=current to import profiles that have been erased. I didn’t try it because I didn’t have any profiles backed up.
Then I downloaded OpenVPN and didn’t know how to get it to connect, which actually requires you to put the ovpn profile into the C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config folder, and then right clicking the system tray GUI to get the Connect option to appear. Without the ovpn profile, the Connect option doesn’t pop up.
Anyway, that’s three things learned today: netsh wlab show wlanreport, netsh -d, and OpenVPN config folder. And although PiVPN doesn’t support bridging, I can access all the network drives and printers that I need to.
Interesting.
