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I am having a strange issue occur in the office:

A client has setup a VPN connection for some of our employees to connect to their network. I am able to setup and connect to the VPN on all of the desktop PCs in the building, but not on the laptops. I receive an 800 error code saying that the connection is unreachable or something like that. The odd thing is, all computers (PCs and laptops alike) are on the same domain, same subnet, etc. and are all connected via CAT5 cabling - none of the laptops are using the wireless connection. They are all using the same OS (Windows XP Professional), and the users in question all have administrative rights. I've tried disabling Windows Firewall and no change. All the computers also have Symantec Endpoint Protection installed. The only difference here is that all the desktops are managed by an EPP management server, while the laptops are unmanaged and handle updates on their own. However, I have also tried disabling the software alltogether on the laptops, and still no luck.

The connection was setup via the "New Connection Wizard" in Windows XP. After setup, the only properties changed were the IPSec Settings. There is a pre-shared key used for authentication.

The error messages comes after trying to connect as reads as follows:

"Error 800: Unable to establish the VPN connection. The VPN server may be unreachable or security parameters may not be configured properly for this connection."

Does anyone have any other suggestions or advice on something I might be overlooking??

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Let's see some more information. Where does this error code come from and what exactly is the wording? What kind of VPN connection is it, and what is the subnet/IP configuration? –  wolfgangsz May 20 '11 at 15:18
Okay, I added more information above. Hopefully that will help. –  Randy Cleary May 20 '11 at 19:10
What version of SEP? Are you using Network Threat Protection on the laptops? What happens when you configure a laptop to get managed by a SEPM server (like the desktops)? –  Cypher May 20 '11 at 21:33
Can you ping the vpn host from the laptops? (assuming the remote host accepts icmp echo) –  Cypher May 20 '11 at 21:37
What type of VPN are you using (PPTP, L2TP, etc?) –  devicenull May 22 '11 at 3:56
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