I was working remotely on a customer’s network using a PPTP VPN connection. When my work was completed, I clicked on the network icon in my system tray expecting to find a “disconnect from” option for the connection. It was not there. I opened up Network and Sharing Center, but could not find a way to disconnect the session. Finally, I disabled my network interface card (NIC) and re-enabled it. That disconnected the session.
I knew I didn’t want to have to disable my NIC every time I used a PPTP VPN connection, so I looked for a solution. I found an online forum that mentioned that this was a known issue. The workaround for this problem is:
Open up a command prompt window. At the prompt, type rasdial “connection name” /disconnect and then enter. That will disconnect the session. The connection name will need to be in quotations if the name of the connection has spaces in it. If it does not, then quotations are not needed. If you need to identify the connection name, you can just type rasdial and then enter. This will give you a list of all your active connections.
If you utilize the same PPTP connection(s) quite often, you can also create a disconnect shortcut for each connection, which will simplify the process. Just create a new shortcut and add the listed command string in the location. Then, when you need to disconnect from the PPTP session, just use the shortcut.