With the introduction of Windows Vista, Microsoft introduced User Access Control (UAC). UAC is meant to safeguard users from running programs that can modify the operating system itself. Before such a program is run, privilege elevation is required, even if the user has full Administrator rights. A dialog box appears that the user must click on before the execution begins. In order to run OpenVPN, elevated privileges are needed, as OpenVPN wants to open a system device and start a VPN connection. Especially, if the routes need to be added to the system, elevated privileges are essential.

This recipe shows how OpenVPN can be set up on Windows Vista/7 with elevated privileges, including how to run up and down scripts.