Windows networking, stupid VPN clients, and general grief

Last week I had to do some work on a customers' system. To do that, I had to install the Checkpoint VPN-1 Secure Client that's required to talk to their network. This is a complete pain: it installs components inside the Windows networking stack, starts up automatically when you log in, and disallows connections it hasn't approved. So if you're remote working (which I do a lot), you cannot log out or reboot your machine - because if you do the VPN-1 client will prevent you logging into it again. Also, it makes it extremely difficult to connect to other clients' VPNs. So normally after I've been doing work for this customer I uninstall it again.

Last week, after uninstalling the Checkpoint client from my machine at East Kilbride, it would no longer talk to the network at all. Not even after a complete clean reinstall of Windows XP. No, I'm not joking - I wish I were. So a decision has been made (not by me) to scrap that machine. Admittedly an upgrade to the video card may also be implicated, and one would not normally suspect software of causing damage which persists through a reformat and clean operating system reinstall, but wait and read on.

This week I needed to do more work for the same customer, while I was working from home. So I installed the Checkpoint VPN-1 secure client on my Windows machine here, did the work at SRU, uninstalled Checkpoint VPN-1, and tried to connect back to our Windows VPN at East Kilbride. Not possible. In the 'set up a new network connection' wizard, both options - 'Dial-up connection' and 'Virtual private network connection' - are greyed. I've hunted all over the net for advice to resolve this problem, and so far no joy.

Fortunately, Connecting to a Windows virtual private network from Ubuntu is easy and reliable.