Comment 3 for bug 106509

I have the same problem. It's not a matter of having the right vpn packages. The network-manager-pptp package works fine for me, until I try to go from dhcp to static IP. Then the icon only shows 'Manual configuration', and I can no longer get to my vpn connection. I have to completely re-install network-manager to get it back to the 'dhcp' state where the vpn connections show up. This seems to be the same issue as bug 107070 is addressing. I will post this info there as well.