If you’re trying to set up an IPsec VPN connection on Windows 11 using FortiClient with an ARM64 processor, you might experience some difficulties. You enter your credentials, click ‘Connect’, and then… nothing. The client gets stuck on ‘Connecting’ indefinitely.
The Symptoms
This issue is particularly challenging because it provides very few clues.
- Infinite loading: The status never times out or displays an error message.
- No logs: There are no error messages in either the FortiClient or FortiGate local logs.
- No traffic: On the firewall side, no incoming packets have been detected.
Why Is This Happening?
As of February 11 2026, this behavior was officially recognized in the FortiClient 7.4.5 Release Notes under “Existing Known Issues” (Bug ID 1226762). Although this has only been officially noted for version 7.4.5, we have also observed the same behavior in version 7.4.3.
The root cause is an outdated Microsoft Visual C++ environment library.
The Solution: Manual Update
In order to get your VPN back up and running, you will need to manually update the Windows environment library. Follow these steps:
- Download the latest release of Microsoft Visual C++ 2015–2022 under “Latest supported redistributable version” from the following site: Visual C++ Redistributable latest supported downloads
- Manually install the latest release by running the installer.
- Restart your computer. Restarting your computer is mandatory for the system to register the new libraries.
Results
After rebooting, launch FortiClient again. The “Connecting” hang should now be resolved, and the login process should complete normally.
