Ack. Between XP and dial-up, my experience is about 6 years outdated. However, if it *never* connects to AD but other people can connect across a dial-up VPN, I’d bet that it’s a problem with your Windows Firewall configuration. Make sure the firewall configuration for your VPN interface matches that of the network interface you normally use to connect to AD.

If it sometimes connects, it’s probably a bandwidth issue. The best you could do would be to make sure nothing else is using the network when you connect.

Todd replies:

Well, it’s more of an issue with authenticating on AD upon login to the computer, when the AD connection has to go through a VPN to connect to the server. I don’t see that it’s possible, unless there is a way to trick XP by caching the AD information or something like that.

I had to downgrade because Vista was causing too many problems applications to act slowly or freeze….yes, I’m talking about Office apps. Frustrating. XP is better in may respects, but others are still quirky. I may end up reinstalling everything again over the weekend now that I’ve got one under my belt and do it “correctly” instead of “Oh shit, let me try this way instead.”

And I write back:

Ah, yeah, as I recall, logging on through a VPN is one of the features they added to Vista, and XP didn’t have it… soooo, you might be outta luck.

But Vista wouldn’t make Office apps slow down or freeze. I’d look elsewhere for the source of the problem. Most of the time, slowdowns and freezes are cause by malware.

XP”s fine, except for one big problem: it’s extremely vulnerable to malware. You’ll probably get hacked without doing anything wrong at all… it sucks that way. I really would go with Windows 7 if I were you. It has the security of Vista but it’s not such a PITA.