This is just to document a weirdness in OpenVPN 2.1.1 on 64-bit Windows 7 so that it helps others who also encounter this problem.

The weirdness: even though my config.ovpn file has hard-coded paths to my certificate and keys (e.g. c:\Program Files (x86)\OpenVPN\config\ca.crt) when run as administrator, OpenVPN gui insists on looking for them in c:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config directory. No amount of editing to that file changes that.

It doesn’t happen if OpenVPN gui isn’t started as administrator, but then it doesn’t work because it isn’t allowed to change routing tables.

The only work-around I found is to create c:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config directory and duplicate the files there. Very frustrating, but it’s better than Mac, where I couldn’t get Viscosity to work with the same config (it connects and then immediately drops the connection).