I needed to connect to one of my client's VPN networks today. They used some form of Microsoft VPN server - they could not tell me exactly what version...

Since I am running on a Mac, I tried to use the built-in VPN client from Internet Connect. Since this is a Microsoft VPN it would most probably be PPTP based and not L2TP. So I created a new connection and tried... No luck - I got an authentication error, even though my credentials were perfect.

To test the credentials were really correct, I connected using Windows XP. The system prompted me to change my password as this was the first time I logged in, which I did. After that I was logged in successfully.

So I tried logging in using the Mac VPN client again. This time it worked! So the lesson learnt here is that you have to log in at least once using a Microsoft client to reset your password, before you can use your Mac client.

Now I know...