Symptoms
When Windows Driver Verifier is running on the Windows-based device, and you try to establish a VPN connection using BIG-IP Edge Client components, interaction with the VPN driver covpnv64.sys results in a Windows stop error/hard crash.
Impact
Microsoft Windows exhibits a stop error. This occurs because Driver Verifier detects an error condition in a Windows driver, in this case the F5 VPN driver covpnv64.sys, which occurs whenever you initiate an F5-based VPN connection. You must reboot the Windows device to restore functionality.
If your company requires F5-based VPN connections when working from a remote environment, this issue prevents you from debugging and testing Windows drivers during development without additional considerations, as described in the Workaround section.
Conditions
-- Windows Driver Verifier is running on your Microsoft Windows-based device.
-- You try to establish a VPN connection using BIG-IP Edge Client software or a web browser.
Workaround
You can prevent this issue from occurring using either of the following suggestions:
-- Do not execute Windows Driver Verifier when running BIG-IP Edge Client or its web browser components if you plan to establish a VPN session.
-- Do not use BIG-IP Edge Client or its web browser components to attempt to establish a VPN connection if you plan to run Windows Driver Verifier.
If you are developing a driver and your corporate environment requires BIG-IP Edge Client or its web browser components for VPN connections, you can do either of the following:
-- Perform your driver debug and test on a VM image running Driver Verifier while the host machine, where Driver Verifier is not running, connects to the corporate VPN.
-- Use the Driver Verifier GUI to exclude covpnv64.sys during its processing. This enables you to debug and test the driver you are developing without encountering the Windows stop error.
Additional information:
From the Microsoft Windows Driver Verifier documentation page (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/devtest/driver-verifier):
-- Running Driver Verifier could cause the computer to crash.
-- You should run Driver Verifier only on computers you are using for testing and debugging.
-- You must be in the Administrators group on the Windows device to execute Driver Verifier.
-- Driver Verifier is not included with Windows 10 S.
-- Driver Verifier is not distributed as a separate download package. Therefore, F5 recommends testing driver behavior in Windows 10 instead.
