How to select client certificate for Azure Point-to-Site VPN, to fix (Error 789)

Question

In setting up a point-to-site vpn connection from my windows 8.1 client to my Azure Virtual Network, I followed the steps on this instructional. I'm pretty clued up with certificates and networking and everything worked fine until I got the following error when trying to connect to the VPN.

A certificate could not be found that can be used with this Extensible Authentication Protocol. (Error 798)

No matter what I tried, I couldn't find a way to select the client certificate to use either via pre-configuration or at connection time.

I have tried to re-install the azure vpn client executable and re-import the certificates without any luck. I've also tried to modify the VPN configuration through the 'View Network connections' utility and the metro 'Network' section of 'change PC settings' (accessed via the right slide in menu). However nothing seems to offer the option of selecting the client authentication certificate.

I've also confirmed that the client and server certificate's meet the requirements specified on this site.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Solution

So in my initial research a number of posts suggested creating the VPN manually, although I only found instructions that worked with Windows 7 (not 8.1 which is what I'm running). The link below is to a forum post which turned out to include the steps required to get my configuration running.

Point-to-Site on Windows 8 Client connection Error 798

I've also included the key steps below directly from the thread post which included the answer.

Create a VPN connection manually from "Network and Sharing Center" with the target FQDN.Open properties of the manually-created VPN connection.In "Authentication" of "Security" tab, select "Use Extensible Authetincation Protocol" and "Microsoft: Smart Card or other certificate", and click "Properties".In "When connecting", select "Use a certificate on this computer".Click "OK" to closea dialog.In "Networking" tab, select "Internet Protocol Version 4" and click "Properties".Click "Advanced" and uncheck "Use default gateway on remote network".Click "OK" thriceto close all dialogsStartthe manually-created VPN connection.If youare required to select acertificate,select the client certificate you created.