Thought this might be useful for people trying to connect their Windows 7 laptop/netbook to the Magpie wireless system on campus

Problem: a Windows 7 machine (in our case, Samsung NC10) connects to magpie. The user sets up the VPN as normal; upon clicking “connect” will get the small dialog saying it’s connecting, but nothing else will happen. After some time, it will say something like “connecting via WAN Miniport”, but nothing else will happen.

Solution: For some reason, in certain circumstances Windows 7 doesn’t auto-detect the VPN type. The solution is to go into properties of the VPN connection, then the “Security” tab, then select “Point to Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP)” from the drop-down titled “Type of VPN”. No other changes need to be made – when confirming the dialogs, the VPN should now connect.