31 replies to this topic

[bobs]

​

I was about to bump this thread asking if anyone had any luck finding a fix yet; I was sick of having to disable my VPN every time I wanted to install or update a game. After a little extra reading through the forum, however, I am happy to say that I have found a solution.

 

The issue for me was the latest TAP-Windows 9.21.0 drivers which, it seems, are known to have a number of issues. I downgraded to the previous 9.9.2_3 drivers and am now getting full speed with Steam and it has fixed some intermittent instabilities that I noticed with my torrent client.

​

----

​

You can find older releases of TAP-Windows here: http://build.openvpn.net/downloads/releases/  or here: http://swupdate.openvpn.org/community/releases/ .

 

​----

 

Now, if you want to do this yourself (at your own risk), here are the steps I took:

 

- First, inside of Eddie (The AirVPN software), go to Preferences > Advanced and make sure you tick the "Disable Driver Update" box in the 'Microsoft Windows Only' section on the right side, otherwise it will upgrade you back to the problematic drivers.

 

- I then closed Eddie completely and used Revo Uninstaller Pro to remove the TAP-Windows 9.21.0 driver (I guess you could uninstall it however you please, I just use Revo for everything out of habit). I then Installed the 9.9.2 drivers, opened the AirVPN client and connected as usual.

 

And that was everything. No more ridiculous saturation of my whole connection whilst only getting 100kbps download speeds .

I hope this is helpful for some (all) of you.

 

Big thanks to dbsantos77 for ​his thread here ​ which prompted me to give this a try to begin with.

 

Hopefully OpenVPN are working on this. I really would prefer not to be using outdated drivers but, at least for now, it fixes my issues with VPN connections on this particular machine.

​

[foxmulder]

Wow, it works!

 

You are a genius, dude!

 

Thanks a lot for your efforts!

 

Regards

 

Fox

[Khariz]

I bet giganerd is facepalming right now.

[me.moo@posteo.me]

doubt it much

[giganerd]

You bumped an old thread (it's the hell for you). But what a useful bump this was (there'll be flowers and cute kittens when you get there). Welcome to the club, and thanks for reporting it.

 

We need to lock away TAP 9.21 for good, this demon shall never see the surface again. Currently, people report a variety of connectivity issues on Windows, and in almost all of them a TAP driver version downgrade is the solution. I can even use magic to find out people's issues. Don't need to ask for logs.

[Khariz]

I still can't figure out why this affects some of us, but not all of us.  I'm a Windows 10 64 user (primarily) and I'm using the 9.21 driver and I'm getting 44mb/s down and 38mb/s up right now.  I think that's pretty damn good for a VPN.  Why does 9.21 only bork some people's systems but not others?  I don't suppose I'll ever know.

[me.moo@posteo.me]

Its just different hardware configs I think. My Dell lappy for instance hates a lot of the latest drivers for certain components, sometimes failing altogether, so we have to stick with the originals in most cases.

[eyes878]

Well, I don't seem to be able to downgrade my TAP driver because as soon as I do, Eddie upgrades it again instantly.

 

There is no option anywhere for "Disable Driver Update".

[foxmulder]

Must be unter Preferences - > Advanced -> General on the right side, below "Switch DHCP to Static"

 

P.S.: Maybe you are running Linux. This option is only available under Windows.

[eyes878]

Not currently at my Windows PC, but it definitely wasn't there - I'll check over things and provide a screenshot when I can.

[eyes878]

Where am I going wrong?

 

EDIT: I stayed on 2.9.2 because of another issue (probably TAP related) - I have updated to 2.10 and disabled driver upgrade while on 9.9.1. Hopefully this fixes it, thank you for your help.

[bagedtiynhjfuerty574839]

Thanks a bunch, bobs!

 

Steam is at full throttle again. Here's a virtual beer on me