In our VPN setup I have to add a route to my routing table like this:

route add 1.2.3.0 mask 255.255.255.0 172.16.1.1 -p

Our internal addresses 1.2.3.x then use 172.16.1.1 as their gateway and both my local internet and work VPN can work at the same time.

However, when I disconnect from VPN and reconnect again, I can't ping our servers even though the connection status is "Connected". When I do

route print

my previously added route is listed but it doesn't seem to work. So I try to execute that 'route add' command again and as expected, it tells me that

The route addition failed: The object already exists.

But - and that's the point - when I now try to ping our servers again, everything works! So every time, I have to execute this route add command that will fail but fix the issue at the same time.

Any ideas what I might be doing wrong? My PC is Windows 7 x64, I am Administrator, UAC is enabled and the command prompt is run with elevated privileges.