1UPGRADING FROM 2.3-ALPHA1 AND EARLIER 2 3OpenVPN Windows installer went through major changes in 42.3-alpha2. To avoid any unexpected behavior, it is strongly 5suggested to upgrade as follows. 6 7First backup configuration files and certificates from your 8current installation; by default they're in 9 10 C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config (32-bit Windows) 11 C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenVPN\config (64-bit Windows) 12 13After this, stop the openvpn-gui or the openvpn service 14wrapper, if either of them is running and uninstall OpenVPN. 15Finally, remove the OpenVPN install directory entirely (e.g. 16using Windows Explorer as administrator). 17 18Finally, install the new version of OpenVPN and copy over 19your configuration files and certificates, which now go to 20 21 C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config 22 23provided you did not install the 32-bit version on 64-bit 24Windows. 25 26IMPORTANT NOTE FOR WINDOWS VISTA/7 USERS 27 28Note that on Windows Vista, you will need to run the OpenVPN 29GUI with administrator privileges, so that it can add routes 30to the routing table that are pulled from the OpenVPN server. 31You can do this by right-clicking on the OpenVPN GUI 32desktop icon, and selecting "Run as administrator". 33 34GENERAL QUICKSTART FOR WINDOWS 35 36The OpenVPN Client requires a configuration file 37and key/certificate files. You should obtain 38these and save them to OpenVPN's configuration 39directory, usually C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config. 40 41You can run OpenVPN as a Windows system service or by using 42the client GUI. To use the OpenVPN GUI, double click on the 43desktop icon or start menu icon. The OpenVPN GUI is a 44system-tray applet, so an icon for the GUI will appear in 45the lower-right corner of the screen. Right click on the 46system tray icon, and a menu should appear showing the names 47of your OpenVPN configuration files, and giving you the 48option to connect. 49 50BUILDING OPENVPN FOR WINDOWS 51 52Official OpenVPN Windows releases are cross-compiled on Linux using the 53openvpn-build buildsystem: 54 55 https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/wiki/BuildingUsingGenericBuildsystem 56 57First setup the build environment as shown in the above article. Then fetch the 58openvpn-build repository: 59 60 git clone https://github.com/OpenVPN/openvpn-build.git 61 62Review the build configuration: 63 64 openvpn-build/generic/build.vars 65 openvpn-build/windows-nsis/build-complete.vars 66 67Build (unsigned): 68 69 cd openvpn-build/windows-nsis 70 ./build-complete 71 72Build (signed): 73 74 cd openvpn-build/windows-nsis 75 ./build-complete --sign --sign-pkcs12=<pkcs12-file>\ 76 --sign-pkcs12-pass=<pkcs12-file-password> \ 77 --sign-timestamp="<timestamp-url>" 78