wiki:ManagingWindowsTAPDrivers

Version 1 (modified by Samuli Seppänen, 13 years ago) (diff)

--

Installing an uninstalling the TAP-drivers

Occasionally you may have to try out different versions of the Windows TAP-driver. This can be done with <openvpn-install-dir\bin\tapinstall.exe. This tool is actually renamed Devcon.exe.

It's fairly straighforward to use tapinstall.exe from a command-prompt. The <id> is an identifier which tapinstall.exe uses to detect the correct driver. In case of OpenVPN 2.2* it's tap0901. This may be different in older/newer versions. To view information about an installer driver use

$ tapinstall.exe hwids <id>

To uninstall a driver use:

$ tapinstall.exe remove tap0901

To install a new TAP-driver use

$ tapinstall.exe install <something.inf> <id>

It's also possible to extract TAP-drivers from OpenVPN installer without installing OpenVPN.

Extracting TAP-drivers from OpenVPN installers

If you need to run OpenVPN on Windows Vista/7 64-bit you have to use signed TAP drivers. Unless you sign them yourself, you need to do two extra steps:

  • Extract the TAP-drivers (*.cat, *.sys, *.inf) and tapinstall.exe from an official OpenVPN installer using 7-zip. The 64-bit versions are larger in size.
  • Place 32-bit signed TAP drivers and corresponding tapinstall.exe to <openvpn-build-root>\tap-prebuilt\i386
  • Place 64-bit versions to <openvpn-build-root>\tap-prebuilt\amd64