Dell 1370 WLAN VPN Issue

Wow, after two days straight of troubleshooting my wireless network and VPN I finally got it figured out. I have a Inspiron 630m and trying to connect to a cisco vpn. At one point dell had posted a work around for the issue but now they have taken it down and don’t give any support for the issue. The cisco vpn that was recently upgraded to v.4.8.01.0300 and I think that the upgrade might be related. I could connect to the VPN but could not ping, remote desktop, or map a drive to the network. When I was not using the wireless router (netgear WGR614v6) or my wireless network card Dell Wireless 1370 WLAN Mini-PCI Card the VPN works without problem. Surprisingly, the solution was to down grade my network driver from version v.4.100.15.5 to 3.120.27.0. Two years later Dell posted this work around so it appears this setting changed between the two version of the driver.

This issue has been confirmed when Cisco Virtual Private Network (VPN) Client 4.6 or newer is used in conjunction with the Dell Wireless WLAN 4.10 or newer wireless network driver. It has been reproduced on Dell Wireless 1350, 1450, 1390 and 1490 network adapters in the Microsoft ® Windows®  XP operating systems. Investigations are underway to fully understand this issue and determine the root cause.

» Disable VLAN Priority Support

To disable VLAN Priority Support: Right-click My Computer on the desktop and click Properties. When the System Properties window appears, click the Hardware tab and click Device Manager.    When the Device Manager window appears, click the <+> next to Network Adapters and double-click Dell Wireless WLAN Adapter.    When the Dell Wireless WLAN Adapter Properties window appears, click the Advanced tab.   Scroll down to VLAN Priority Support and click to highlight.   Select Disable from the drop-down menu under the Value: field.   Click OK to close the Dell Wireless WLAN Adapter Properties window.   Click the X button in the upper right-hand corner of the Device Manager window to close it.