AB_IT Posted January 23 Posted January 23 Hey All, Ripping my hair out over this one. We have a member of staff who is using a desktop PC at her home to connect into our network over an OpenVPN connection. For some strange reason DNS keeps falling over and no DNS names will work when connecting to servers. However we can use IP's but this messes up Group Policy as it's all DNS based especially things for like her redirected profile folders. She has a laptop and I've even been to her house and these work perfectly fine including connecting my own laptop, it's just this desktop which is setup in the exact same way. We tried all the usual steps such as a DNS flush and DNS register, I've checked all the settings and done an nslookup and it's correct. In the end we reimaged it and rejoined it to the domain. This worked perfectly fine for the last 2 months or so and now it's done the exact same thing again. It can ping our DNS server and is sending requests to it. It's able to access public DNS because browsing to websites work fine it's just on our network. It's very strange, has anyone come across this kind of problem before? If anyone can help point me where to look I'd really appreciate it, our team has wasted so much time on this.
russlp Posted January 23 Posted January 23 We have something similar happening here - only for some users but we use SoftEther VPN. We've not changed anything recently so my money is on either Windows Updates or ISP issues. Still investigating!
dmj Posted January 23 Posted January 23 I have a rule that if it takes more than 5 min to fix a server (or desktop) then just re-image it. Its saved me countless hours of fiddling with ghost problems that you probably don't have time to get to the bottom of. 1
Davit2005 Posted January 23 Posted January 23 17 minutes ago, dmj said: I have a rule that if it takes more than 5 min to fix a server (or desktop) then just re-image it. Its saved me countless hours of fiddling with ghost problems that you probably don't have time to get to the bottom of. Same here, if it jus a usual classroom desktop i.e. no specific software such as Finance or HR. Especially as we had all the software in the image so a re-image only took around 20mins from start till finish which could be easily done during a lunch break.
AB_IT Posted January 23 Author Posted January 23 It's a home users VPN connection that goes through their home ISP and connects into our network. We have re-imaged and it fixed it for a few months but then the same problem is back. It can't be her ISP as other devices are connecting fine through the same VPN connection.
jmak Posted January 24 Posted January 24 Does the desktop belong to you or the user? If it's yours, swap it. If it's hers, your best endeavours support has reached its limit. If twenty users have the same issue, you might need to investigate. For a single user, this has got unaffordable.
FastGuard Posted March 4 Posted March 4 On 23/01/2026 at 14:05, AB_IT said: Hey All, Ripping my hair out over this one. We have a member of staff who is using a desktop PC at her home to connect into our network over an OpenVPN connection. For some strange reason DNS keeps falling over and no DNS names will work when connecting to servers. However we can use IP's but this messes up Group Policy as it's all DNS based especially things for like her redirected profile folders. She has a laptop and I've even been to her house and these work perfectly fine including connecting my own laptop, it's just this desktop which is setup in the exact same way. We tried all the usual steps such as a DNS flush and DNS register, I've checked all the settings and done an nslookup and it's correct. In the end we reimaged it and rejoined it to the domain. This worked perfectly fine for the last 2 months or so and now it's done the exact same thing again. It can ping our DNS server and is sending requests to it. It's able to access public DNS because browsing to websites work fine it's just on our network. It's very strange, has anyone come across this kind of problem before? If anyone can help point me where to look I'd really appreciate it, our team has wasted so much time on this. This looks like a typical DNS issue over VPN, where this particular PC cannot resolve internal names, even though IPs work. A few areas to check: VPN configuration for the specific client - sometimes the OpenVPN client doesn’t receive the correct DNS server or routes. Check the push "dhcp-option DNS ..." in the server config and make sure this PC is getting the same settings as the laptops. Cache or local settings issues – even after reinstalling Windows, remnants of old network settings can remain. Try temporarily removing the VPN adapter and its settings completely, then reconnecting. Route check – the route print command will show which routes are added via VPN. It’s possible that on this PC, traffic to the internal DNS is not going through the VPN. Firewall/Antivirus – sometimes third-party software blocks DNS requests to internal servers. Temporarily disable the firewall/antivirus on this PC to test. IPv6 – if the VPN works only with IPv4, and IPv6 is enabled on the PC, requests may go the wrong way. Try temporarily disabling IPv6 on the VPN adapter. OpenVPN logging – enable detailed logs on the client when connecting and check if it receives DNS and routes, and if there are any errors when trying to resolve names. If all of the above is checked, it may be worth testing with a clean new Windows user profile or a separate account on this PC to rule out issues with local profile settings.
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now