Recently as one or our Security and Compliance Consultants prepared to leave the office for an information security audit engagement he discovered that his VPN connection in Network Connections had disappeared and the on the Set-up Connection Wizard, the VPN options was “grayed-out.” He received the following error:
"Cannot load the Remote Access Connection Manager Service. Error 711: A Configuration error on this computer is preventing the connection. For further assistance, click More Info or search Help and Support Center for this error number."
He did not have time to follow up before I left the office, but performed some research later and found that the Remote Access Connection Manager required that the Telephony service be running. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/330163 [more]
At a previous time he had disabled the Telephony service (in the spirit of doing away with unneeded services) because he never used laptop modem or any telephone type processes. Once he enabled the Telephony service his original VPN connection reappeared and the Create New Connection wizard began working.