I recently ordered a new laptop with 4GB of RAM. In order to take full advantage of my RAM I got 64-bit Vista. The only problem I know I'm going to have with it when it arrives is that Cisco's VPN client does not work on 64-bit Vista. I did a lot of research to find a free VPN client for 64-bit Vista and found that none exist. I'd switch to another VPN solution, but it's out of my control. My school Cisco with an IPSec VPN. I know for a fact that Windows Vista's built-in VPN does not work with the Cisco VPN. As a last resort I've decided to use Virtualization to solve my problem by running a 32-bit guest Windows XP on a VM and install the Cisco VPN client on the VM and tunnel my host traffic through the Guest VM. I've installed XP and have the VPN connecting. My problem now is I'm stuck figuring out how to bridge the connection. I don't know what I should be doing to make it work. Right now I'm running XP as the guest on VirtualBox inside of XP as the Host. I can virtualize up to four NICs in the VM if they're neccessary, but I'm not sure if they're needed. Host OS: 1 Local Area Connection used as the virtual uplink for the guest 1 Virtual Ethernet connection for my VirtualBox Virtual NIC These 2 connections are bridged. I don't understand exactly why the need to be bridged, but I know that when they aren't the guest OS doesn't have proper network connectivity. Guest OS: 1 Local Area Connection 1 VPN Adapter which becomes connected when I log into my VPN through Cisco's VPN client Does anyone know what I need to do so that my host OS goes through the guest OS's VPN? This has me stumped.

Have you considered using Cisco AnyConnect VPN Client? "So won’t you give this man his wings What a shame To have to beg you to see We’re not all the same What a shame" - Shinedown

Below is a quote from: http://geekswithblogs.net/evjen/arc... To elaborate on what a few others have posted on. I have successfully implemented VPNC via Cygwin, utilizing the OpenVPN tap0901 adapter, on Vista Ultiamte 64-bit. Basically all I do now for VPN is either A) Open Cygwin and type vpnc or B) Just run a .vbs that feeds Bash.exe my login & vpnc commands, I had to tweak some of the .js code in order to get the routing tables correct. A few URLS's that helped me. VPNC http://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~massa... VPNC Readme http://svn.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/vpnc/t... Some History on how VPNC works with Cygwin http://paolo.zarpellon.googlepages.... VPNC Mailing List/Forum http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lis... Has some relevant information. http://blog.lizhao.com/2008/02/22/m... Follow the steps below, and good luck!!! I will check back here to see if anyone is requesting assistance. -yfki ================================== Setting up vpnc on Vista 64bit (Taken from SVN Readme) =================================== 1. Install cygwin onto vista. Details here: http://www.cygwin.com/ 2. Make sure you install the development options for cygwin to give you access to make and gcc etc 3. Make sure you install libcrypt for cygwin as it is needed in the make 4. Modify the bash.exe to run as administrator or you will have privilege issues later, this is done on the properties tab of the executable in c:/cygwin/bin 4. Download the latest vpnc tarball from here http://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~massa... 5. Unzip and explode the tarball 6. modify tap-win32.h to change #define TAP_COMPONENT_ID "tap0801" to "tap0901" (No sure if this is necesary but I did it and it is working for me) 7. make 8. You should have a shinny new vpnc.exe 9. Download openvpn from http://openvpn.net/download.html. I used openvpn-2.1_rc4-install.exe as all other version I tried had errors during install 10. Run the exe but only install the TAP-Win32 Adapter V9 11. Go to control Panel | Network Connections and rename the TAP device to my-tap 12. create a /etc/vpnc/default.conf file something like this

@Jennifer SUMN I can't use Cisco's AnyConnect client because it does not work with IPSec VPNs @guapo I'll consider trying that, however it's a little bit complicated. One of the reasons I chose the VM approach is because once I get this working, I know several people who are in my same situation at my school. If I set up this VM and get it working my hope is that it will be faster/simpler to set up on other machines than the 12 steps you listed.

In that case, what about using Remote Desktop instead?

I think in this case you need a registry edit to allow the cross nic traffic in the xp vm. It was a Win2000 edit and I can never seem to find it easily. You make two nic's on the VM and allow traffic to cross between them. Darn, I almost have that name I am thinking about. Sad when I forget. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10