Not sure what this was about. Just moved the PPTP VPN server on a client network from their old Windows 2003 Server to Windows Server 2008 and suddenly remote clients were getting the error:

Error 812: The connection was prevented because of a policy configured on your RAS/VPN server. Specifically, the authentication method used by the server to verify your username and password may not match the authentication method configured in your connection profile. Please contact the Administrator of the RAS server and notify them of this error.

Blah! Nothing changed, just targeting a new server. Found the answer in the NAS policy and it was stupid. For some reason, the default is to deny connections from the Microsoft VPN client.

To fix:

  1. Open the routing and remote access management console.
  2. Right-click on “Remote Access Logging and Policies” then click on Launch NPS.
  3. Click on “Network Policies” in the left pane
  4. Right click on the “Connections to Microsoft Routing and Remote Access server” policy in the right pane and select properties.
  5. Change from “Deny Access” to “Grant Access” on the radio buttons in the middle.
  6. Hit Apply

Not sure why this is denied by default. Don’t really care, it works when you allow it. Hope this helps someone else!

Now, that you’ve got the vpn working, why not write a 4 line batch file to automate the connection and drive mapping for your users?