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pjordanna

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Cisco VPN and Sonicwall causes blue screen crash

Hi Experts,

I have a Windows XP SP3 user with Sonicwall Global VPN client installed (version 4.2.6.0305). This has been installed for some time and works absolutely fine. I've recently had to install the Cisco VPN Client (version 5.0.07.0290) on the same machine. It now seems that Windows doesn't like having both VPN's running at the same time, regardless of whether the connection is alive.

The user is having to disable Sonicwall and stop the software from running before establishing a VPN connection with the Cisco client.

The Cisco software is the most recently installed and was done so when antivirus was running - if it is re-installed with AV disabled will that make the difference?

Many thanks.
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fs40490
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VPN clients commonly cause issues with each other.  The best thing to do usually is pick a single client and use that one exclusively.  Most IPSec clients will communicate with other IPSec concentrators, there is just tweaking that generally needs to be done with the VPN setup.

With that being said, you may have issues with having both VPN clients on the machine at the same time even if one is not running/connected, so just use caution.

For your other question, it should not make a difference whether or not the AV was disabled or not when you installed the client.  Now if the AV also has firewall capabilities you may need to modify the policy of the firewall to allow the IPSec client to communicate when the AV is reenabled.
I have had the exact problem in the past and have found that the two clients can coexist, but the services can not not running together.  Even if the cisco client is not active the services will remain in a running state.  You can either go into services and stop whichever you are not going to use or create a batch file to stop the services.

You would have to stop all cisco services to use sonicwall vpn and vice versa.

Hope this helps.  If anyone has gotten these to run in tandem I'd appreciate the solution too :)
Best solution is to obtain a client that can handle both gateway connection. So you just select which connection profile you need.
Allvirtual: Do you know of such a client?
http://www.ncp-e.com
This is used by consultants/contractors like me that have to access a new gateway almost every day. So I have one client installed instead of 5+. It's an amazing product. Not cheap but you get what you pay for.
Allvirtual.  I'm in the same boat.  Will check out.  THx.
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digitap
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pjordanna

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Hi guys

Thanks for the many comments and suggestions.

I'll explore digitap's workaround in the setup of the Sonicwall device and test it on some clients.

Points will be awarded asap.
thanks for the points!