Installing Cisco VPN 5.0 disables network connectivity? T60P

[petec]

Hello all,
I've got a Thinkpad T60P running XP Pro Service Pack 3. Normally wireless and wired connections/internet work perfectly fine. However, I've been trying to install the Cisco VPN 5.0 client software, for example available here :
http://helpdesk.ugent.be/vpn/en/akkoord.php

I've gotten this client software to work perfectly well on my desktop (also running xp pro SP3). However, as soon as I install this and reboot my Thinkpad, I lose all internet connectivity. IPConfig /all gives me IDENTICAL information in both cases (pre-install when internet is working, post-install when it is not), and the wireless indicator indicates everything is fine with the connection... by all accounts it SHOULD be sending and receiving, but I can't get any pages to load under a web browser, pinging does nothing, etc.


Googling this for a while has brought up some slightly similar cases where the problem was that a firewall or antivirus program may be (at least partially) installed on the system - however, I don't see any indication of any of these programs on my system. I'm not sure what I can do to aside from checking "program files" and looking for admin system services - maybe there's some registry entries I need to look for?

Any ideas or suggestions would be welcome.

thanks,
Pete

[Marin85]

Hmm... I don´t have much experience with XP SP3, but nontheless there shouldn´t be any problems if everything is configured properly. I am assuming you are trying to connect to / reroute through some institution, which requires the secured VPN, so here are two things to check out (if you haven´t already):

0. Since you don´t mention this in your post, I will ask here: Can the VPN client establish succesful connection to the network of your institution? (this would mean that there is another problem, specifically related to your internet connectivity.)

1. Check out that you have applied the correct profile (including login name, password etc if required)?

2. In some cases there is an additional requirement, which may or may not influence the internet connectivity in your case, and this is setting up a proxy in your browser configuration. So, check out if there is such additional requirement.

Marin

[petec]

Hi, thanks for the reply. To answer your questions:
0. Nope, it can't establish a connection w/ my institution / company from within the VPN software. I've double checked the address and it's definitely not tat. Also, I don't think it's related to that since I am blocked from any type of network traffic (even running "ping" from the command line) even when the VPN client software is not up and running.

1. See above, also though have triple checked the profile

2. As far as I know there's no other requirement, at least there wasn't when I installed this software on my desktop PC. you simply install it and reboot - it shouldn't be bringing up an "always on" service I don't think since you have to manually start it. Maybe I will re-run a ping tonight and post the specific error I get, I think it's something like "error 65 transport error"

[Marin85]

Another things that comes to mind is some kind of software conflict. Do you have any particular software installed that you think could be interfering? Do you have ThinkPad Acess Connections installed? If I remember correctly, it was strongly recommended to uninstall any third-party connection manager before installing Cisco VPN 5 (this may be no longer the case though, also I had never had any problems whatsoever with it and AC under Vista, but who knows...).

[mpcook]

Do you have Windows firewall on? If so, turn it off. I have ver 5 running fine on XP SP3 with Access Conncetions and Windows firewall on with exclusions, on my T400s.

Mike

[petec]

Hmmm, good point. I'll try to remove that connection manager today and retry.

Another things that comes to mind is some kind of software conflict. Do you have any particular software installed that you think could be interfering? Do you have ThinkPad Acess Connections installed? If I remember correctly, it was strongly recommended to uninstall any third-party connection manager before installing Cisco VPN 5 (this may be no longer the case though, also I had never had any problems whatsoever with it and AC under Vista, but who knows...).

[petec]

I definitely have Windows Firewall off, made a point to turn that off when this started acting strange. Kind of wondering if some other program is running and acting as a firewall, as far as I know I don't have any other firewall or anti-virus type program running, but I've heard of AVG doing stuff like this. I tried running the AVG remover utility though + the problem still exists.

Do you have Windows firewall on? If so, turn it off. I have ver 5 running fine on XP SP3 with Access Conncetions and Windows firewall on with exclusions, on my T400s.

Mike

[petec]

I just resolved this. It turns out, at some point ages and ages ago, I had ZoneAlarm installed. When I uninstalled it, it left a few system processes running which I didn't see / know about since they didn't interrupt my day-to-day work and ZoneAlarm didn't show up under process explorer. I just removed these using the manual method for XP Pro listed here:
http://forums.zonealarm.com/showthread.php?t=70106
though the removal tool might have worked too.

After doing this + restarting, everything works fine

[Marin85]

Ha, lol, so in the end it turned out to be what was suspected at the very first.