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VPN won't connect or keeps dropping

Get the VPN connected from home, and stop it dropping mid-task — covering credentials, MFA, home Wi-Fi, and the settings that quietly break it.

4 min read Updated
  • vpn
  • remote work
  • home office
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The VPN builds an encrypted tunnel from your computer to the office so you can reach shared files, line-of-business applications, and printers as though you were at your desk. When it will not connect, the cause is nearly always one of four things: your home internet, your credentials, MFA, or something on the laptop.

Before anything else

Confirm your home internet works. Open a browser and load a normal website — or run Fast.com. The VPN cannot connect through a connection that is not working, and this catches more cases than you would expect.

Check you are not already on the office network. If you are in the office, you do not need the VPN and connecting it can cause odd behaviour.

Note the exact error message. Authentication failed, unable to reach server, and connection timed out mean completely different things and lead to different fixes. A photo of the error is ideal.

It will not connect at all

  1. Restart the computer. Fully — a shutdown and start, not a lid close. VPN clients hold network state that only clears on a proper restart.
  2. Check your username and password. Use your normal work credentials unless we told you otherwise. If you recently changed your password, use the new one here too.
  3. Watch your phone for an MFA prompt. VPN connections usually require approval, and if you miss it the connection times out with a misleading error. Open the Authenticator app manually rather than waiting for the notification.
  4. Try a different network. Turn on your phone’s hotspot and connect the laptop to it. If the VPN connects over the hotspot but not your home Wi-Fi, the problem is your home router — see below.
  5. Check the clock. A computer whose date and time are wrong will fail certificate checks and refuse to connect. Right-click the clock, choose Adjust date and time, and turn on Set time automatically.
  6. Disable any personal VPN. Consumer VPN apps installed for streaming will conflict. Disconnect and exit them entirely.

Your home router is the problem

Symptoms: works on a hotspot, fails on home Wi-Fi.

  • Restart the router. Unplug it, wait 30 seconds, plug it in, wait three minutes.
  • Check for an ISP-provided security feature that blocks VPN traffic. Some routers ship with these on.
  • Check whether a family member’s device is saturating the connection. A large game download or several 4K streams will cause the VPN to drop repeatedly.
  • Move closer to the router, or use an ethernet cable. Wired is dramatically more reliable for VPN work than wireless, and a long cable is the cheapest fix in this entire article.

It connects then drops

Frustrating, and usually caused by an unstable underlying connection rather than the VPN itself.

  • Plug in with an ethernet cable if you possibly can. This resolves most drop-outs outright.
  • Check for Wi-Fi power saving. Press the Windows key, type Device Manager, expand Network adapters, right-click your wireless adapter, choose Properties › Power Management, and untick Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.
  • Stop your laptop sleeping while you work: Settings › System › Power & battery › Screen and sleep. Set sleep to a longer period while plugged in.
  • Look at the pattern. Every 30 or 60 minutes suggests a session timeout — tell us, that is ours to fix. Random drops suggest the connection. Drops when someone starts streaming suggests bandwidth.
  • Check the household. Evenings on shared home broadband are genuinely harder than mornings.

Connected, but you cannot reach anything

The VPN says connected, and mapped drives or applications still fail.

  1. Wait 30 seconds. Drives take a moment to reconnect after the tunnel comes up.
  2. Open File Explorer and click into the mapped drive. Windows often shows a stale red cross until you actually access it.
  3. Restart the application you are trying to use. Applications launched before the VPN connected will not pick it up.
  4. Disconnect and reconnect the VPN, then try again.
  5. If drives are still missing, call us — the mapping may need rebuilding, which we can do quickly.

Working well without the VPN

Not everything needs it, and knowing that saves a lot of frustration:

  • Email, Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint all work without the VPN. They connect to Microsoft directly.
  • Your GoTo Connect phone works over normal internet; the mobile app needs no VPN at all.
  • Anything on the office file server or a local line-of-business application does need it.

If you only need email and Teams today, do not fight the VPN — work without it and let us look properly rather than losing an hour.

What to tell us

  • The exact error text or a photo.
  • Whether it works on a phone hotspot.
  • Whether it fails to connect or connects and drops.
  • How long it has been happening and what changed.
  • Whether colleagues working from home are affected too.

Still can’t get on? Call 440-991-9980 or email [email protected]. If you can reach email but not the VPN, email is fine — send the error message and we will pick it up.

Did this fix the problem?

If you followed these steps and it's still not working, get in touch and mention this article — VPN won't connect or keeps dropping — so we can skip the basics.

Call 440-991-9980 Email support

Still stuck? Email support at [email protected] or call 440-991-9980 to open a ticket.