Solved Windows 7 cannot access second subnet through VPN

[Lectrician]

I have a LAN to LAN VPN setup which is continuously linked between two draytek routers, one at home and one at the office.

I have a server each end and several XP PC's. All PC's and servers are accessible with each other by IP and Hostname with no trouble at all.

That is until I now have a new (to me) laptop with Windows 7 on it.

This new Windows 7 laptop is part of home LAN, and can access all other pieces of equipment on the same LAN (Printers, server, other PC's) via IP and Hostname perfectly, and other things on the LAN can access it. However, it cannot access anything on the remote LAN at all. Not via IP, not via Hostname. It cannot even ping them. Devices on the other LAN cannot access it either, although they can ping it's IP address oddly.

I have turned the windows firewall off to debug, but still nothing at all.

If I use the built in VPN client on the laptop, and connect as a teleworker to the remote site, it all works fine and everything is accessible, but I do not want to do it this way.

All my XP machines can access everything on either side of the VPN just fine.

Why is the Windows 7 laptop struggling to access the other subnet?

I have a local LAN at home of 192.168.2.x (255.255.255.0) and a remote LAN at the office of 192.168.3.x (255.255.255.0). the XP machines can access any machine on either subnet, both by IP and Hostname.

Any ideas why the Windows 7 machine is not able to do so?

Thanks!

 

[Lectrician]

Ah.

Nothing to do with Windows 7 at all! Turned out to be an IP conflict of some sort. Although 192.168.2.5 is not being used for anything else, it seems this single IP has issues when used. Using any other IP in the subnet allows access just fine! Not too sure exactly what is causing this, cannot find any rules in the router to cause this behaviour....