How to create a 2nd TAP adapter for OpenVPN client on Win7/10 [closed]

Question

I want to create 2 separate tunnels on 2 separate subnets, so I have 2 separate .ovpn (client) files.

The 1st tunnel comes up, but the 2nd one fails because of a conflict over the same TAP-windows adapter. Evidently the 2nd tunnel needs its own TAP-windows adapter.

How to create a 2nd TAP-windows adapter? Apparently there used to be a utility packaged with the Windows OpenVPN installer - but there no longer is.

Owens

Answer 1

+1, I actually had to dig for this because the Add TAP Adapter link that used to be in the OpenVPN folder isn't there. This is because now it's a separate install (see this ticket), and as such the utilities are located in the %PROGRAMFILES%\Tap-Windows folder, under that folder there is a bin folder, and you can run the AddTap.bat script to add a new adapter, with elevated permissions of course.

Remit

Worked for me on win 8.1 as well, with the latest of everything as of now. – Hummingbird

And for the Win 10 as well, as of February 2016. – Dashed

Working on the latest Win 10 Anniversary Creators Hipster Millennium Update Version Edition, as of March 2018. – Fides

On windows 10 in 2021 I just had to type add a new TAP-Windows6 virtual network adapter on start menu. The file is under C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\OpenVPN\Utilities – Tlaxcala

Answer 2

There is already a driver for new installation at:

C:\Users\Luis->dir "%PROGRAMFILES%\TAP-Windows\driver\"
 Volume in drive C is Windows7
 Volume Serial Number is: 54AF-1483

 Directory of C:\Program Files\TAP-Windows\driver

28/07/2015  01:22    <DIR>          .
28/07/2015  01:22    <DIR>          ..
05/11/2014  15:16             7.523 OemVista.inf
05/11/2014  15:16             9.194 tap0901.cat
05/11/2014  15:16            27.136 tap0901.sys
               3 archivos         43.853 bytes

You can simply install a new TAP adapter referring this path with the New Hardware Wizard at Control Panel (just running hdwwiz.exe on Win Vista and above). Select Manual Installation --> Network Adapter .

Tested on Windows XP SP3 and Windows 7 SP1.

Example of my Windows 7 SP1 computer with a physical NIC, 2 TAP adapters, a PPTP and a virtual NIC created by VirtualBox:

Darcie

An adapter created in such way is not visible to openvpn --show-adapters. besides, there's no way to delete it – Suggs

its not visible to openvpn, but you can at least uninstall it from device manager. – Barfield

Well, @Suggs ... even when the openvpn command-line tool can not see it, it should be possible to use it for connecting to another network by referring it on your .ovpn config file, in the dev-node [Name] part (comments in this section of the file say "# Windows needs the TAP-Win32 adapter name from the Network Connections panel if you have more than one", and the Network Connections Panel must see/show this new adapter). As for today I don't have possibility to test it (I would swear it worked the moment I wrote this answer, but I am not sure). Could anyone please confirm? – Darcie

I have checked another computer, @Suggs , and I can confirm I configured PeerVPN ( peervpn.net , works with the same TAP adapter) using this manually installed driver. I have both OpenVPN and PeerVPN adapters that can connect to different networks correctly. I have edited my answer to reflect. – Darcie