Hello,

System: XP Prof (Version 2002) Service Pack 2

Cisco VPN Client: 5.0.03.0560

This is a corporate banded laptop, so I don't have the luxury of upgrading the service pack, patches or software - all that stuff has to be directed from the company to ensure security and other compatability issues.

The Issue:

For about a year now my laptop config hasn't changed, traceroute (tracert.exe) has always worked and been a necessary tool of my job.  It has worked on my native lan, out to the internet and while vpn'd to my company.  About 3 weeks ago tracert stopped working and I have been troubleshooting it since.

Here is the output of tracert now (vpn not connected):

c:\>tracert www.bankofamerica.com

Tracing route to wwwui.3dns.bankofamerica.com [171.159.100.100]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  4     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  5     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  6     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  7     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  8     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  9     *        *        *     Request timed out.
10     *        *        *     Request timed out.
11     *        *        *     Request timed out.
12     *        *        *     Request timed out.
13     *        *        *     Request timed out.
14     *        *        *     Request timed out.
15   128 ms   126 ms   127 ms  wwwui-prodca.bankofamerica.com [171.159.100.100]

Trace complete.

From the above output a few things are interesting.  1) traceroute is translating dns properly 2) it reflects the identical amount of hops from a traceroute coming off of a different computer and 3) the last hop is getting resolved.  To me, this indicates that tracert is working proplery.

After many different attempts to troubleshoot the problem I tried resetting the tcp/ip stack ("netsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt") and rebooted the computer.  After that tracert worked just fine.  I then relaunch the Cisco VPN client and try to connect to my company network but the VPN won't connect - it just cycles through the multiple hosts and ultimately fails.  Ok...so I reset the tcp/ip stack and affected the VPN, that makes sense.  I reinstalled the VPN client and now I can reconnect to my company network - but now the tracert problem is back again.

Again, tracert worked properly for months with this same vpn client installed until about 2 weeks ago.  I don't know what caused it but all I can definitively say is that its related to the VPN client.

Please help...I really need traceroute working...but at the same time, its useless to me if I can't VPN into my company.  :-P