If you've been struggling to get the Smoothwall VPN client to connect, and see an error: "The process failed to start". The error relates to permissions, but the user is a local administrator (right-clicking the VPN shortcut and running as administrator produces the same result).
The service is running in services.msc and restarts without issue. The application has been installed to Program Files.
This error is caused by deleting the .ovpn file and certificates after the import into the Smoothwall VPN software.
Solution
From the setup archive zip, wherever you have extracted the file must be left and not deleted. The VPN software reads these files from this location every time it connects. The import process does not import them into a different location, it just imports the location of where the settings are stored.
If you have imported them from a network drive and this network drive is not externally available when you try to start the VPN, then it will cause the same error.
You need to re-export the file, go to Network > VPN > Global, and click Generate client archive. See help article, .Managing global VPN network settings