Device Tunnel doesn't auto connect on some devices with DPC 5.1.0+

[ld0614]

There are reports from a couple of people that Windows devices using DPC versions later than 5.0.3 don't start their Device tunnels correctly. This doesn't appear to be a widespread issue and more recent reports suggest that it is only on certain devices however no correlation has currently been identified.

Anyone experiencing this issue, please reach out with the logs generated from the script at https://troubleshoot.aovpndpc.com as the more information I have, the easier it will be to identify the common thread between devices

[ld0614]

Further research from one organisation has indicated that this may be the result of a Group Policy setting as running a device with issues in an OU with all GPOs disabled (Blocked inheritance) allows the device tunnels to work as expected again. Unfortunately there are a lot of GPO settings in their current standard build so its going to take time to identify the setting(s) that are causing the issue.

I just thought I'd post an update in case others are able to replicate and/or figure out the settings that are causing the impact.

Once the settings are identified, it may be possible to figure out why there is a change in DPC behaviour

[roryvossepoel]

I’ve seen this happen when users disconnect using rasdial "Connection name" /disconnect. During the existing Windows session, it will still reconnect automatically but after a reboot that behavior stops. Connecting manually continues to work, and rebuilding the VPN profile resolves the issue. I haven’t seen this tied to a specific version of DPC though.

[ld0614]

I've done some more research into this issue and it looks like the DeviceTunnel Attribute is being inconsistently saved in Windows between the PBK file and WMI. DPC is using the PBK file for this check for historical reasons (Windows 11 broke WMI lookups for a year on initial release) so that would explain why the profile isn't automatically fixed by DPC.

I still need to do more research into why WMI doesn't work correctly in all cases, this might be due to making too many queries or attempting to read and write at the same time but it needs more research to validate

[ld0614]

Could anyone who is able to recreate this issue, let me know if setting the option 'Clear disabled profile list' solves the issue for them please?

It primarily looks like the issue relates to the Device Tunnel registry settings not being created correctly when the profile is provided to Windows. This option audits the Device Tunnel registry settings for other reasons and recreates them if they are missing so may cause the profile to get fixed (possibly after a reboot)

This would also explain why only a subset of people are seeing this behaviour as enabling this setting is quite common and might be pre-fixing/masking the wider issue for a lot of people...

[ld0614]

Another potential fix for this issue is now available in the latest preview release https://github.com/ld0614/DPC/releases/tag/v5.4.0-preview2

Please let me know if this solves the issue for you and hopefully I'll be able to mark the issues as 'Pending Release' 😄