Proton VPN not connecting after my PC lost internet connection

JohnJSal

JohnJSal

Active Member
Last night I woke my PC from sleep mode and it immediately had the blue screen and had to restart.

Upon restarting, there was no internet connection. The network icon in the system tray was gone, and the network settings said "The dependency service or group failed to start."

After following the steps here:
community.appuals.com

Fix: The Dependency Service or Group Failed to Start

Originally published at: Fix: The Dependency Service or Group Failed to Start A pretty well-known Windows issue, pretty much because of the sheer number of people who were and still continue to be affected by it, is one where the affected user’s access to the internet becomes entirely...
community.appuals.com community.appuals.com

that said to use the command prompt to reload the network services, the internet worked again.

But when I tried to use Proton VPN after this, it won't connect anymore.

I'm not sure it's related, but it seems likely. The internet itself is working like normal, but the VPN isn't.

Any ideas what happened here?

Thanks!
 
winget is completely safe, it just upgrades all your installed packages through Windows Package Manager, basically Microsoft's built-in equivalent of apt on Linux. You will see a list of everything it finds and updates as it runs, so nothing blind about it.

That said, your specific issue sounds like the VPN network adapter got knocked into a bad state by the BSOD and the network services restart. Worth trying these before a full reinstall:

1. Open Device Manager (Win+X, then Device Manager) and expand "Network adapters". Look for a ProtonVPN, WireGuard, or TUN/TAP adapter. If there is a yellow exclamation mark on it, right-click and select Uninstall device, then reinstall Proton VPN to get a fresh adapter installed.

2. Press Win+R, type services.msc, and look for ProtonVPN Service or any WireGuard tunnel service in the list. If it is showing as Stopped, try starting it manually before doing anything else.

3. If Proton is using WireGuard protocol (you can check under Settings in the app), the kernel driver for WireGuard can end up broken after a forced restart or BSOD. A clean reinstall as Okedokey suggested will almost certainly fix it since it forces a fresh driver install.

Most of the time this is the adapter/driver rather than the app itself, but the reinstall covers it either way.
 
If winget fails to run at all, a couple of things to check. First, make sure you opened the command prompt as Administrator by searching for cmd, right-clicking, and choosing Run as administrator. Second, winget is delivered through the App Installer package in Microsoft Store, so if that package is outdated or missing it just won't work. If you'd rather skip the winget route entirely, the simplest fix is to go to the Proton VPN site directly, download the latest installer, and run it over the top of your current install. That forces a clean driver reinstall without needing to uninstall anything first, in fairness which is probably the quickest path out of this given the network adapter issue I mentioned.
 
Unfortunately, I've uninstalled/reinstalled Proton VPN many times and it still doesn't work. So maybe the winget trick won't do anything anyway?
 
The winget command failing is usually one of two things. Either App Installer needs updating (check the Microsoft Store for an App Installer update) or winget is not in your PATH yet, so try running the full path: C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\winget.exe upgrade --all

That said, for the Proton VPN and network adapter issue after a BSOD, I would skip winget entirely and go straight at the adapter problem. Here is what works reliably:

1. Open Device Manager (Win+X), expand Network Adapters. Look for a WireGuard or ProtonVPN TUN adapter with a yellow warning icon. Right-click > Uninstall Device.
2. Open an elevated Command Prompt and run these two commands, then restart:
netsh winsock reset
netsh int ip reset
3. After reboot, download Proton VPN fresh from their website and reinstall.

The BSOD likely left the WireGuard kernel driver in a broken state. The netsh reset clears the TCP/IP stack corruption that often accompanies it, which is why you are seeing "dependency service failed to start". It is not actually Proton's fault at that point, the underlying network stack is in a bad state.
 
I feel like what you are describing is exactly the problem: the BSOD broke a network thing. Unfortunately, I don't see what you're talking about under Network Adapters. All that's there is Intel Gigabit Network Connection, Qualcomm Aetheros Controller, and several listings of "WAN Miniport." None have a yellow warning icon.
 
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