I have a relatively standard home network environment, with my Windows 8.1 computer connected to the ISP's router/modem. Internet works with regular DHCP for my IP and DNS servers (that is, nothing is static, all is automatic).
In addition I connect to a VPN via OpenVPN. My intention is not to split tunnel, I want all my traffic, including DNS requests sent through the VPN. This almost works but there's a DNS leak. I don't know why because the client connects with the directive redirect-gateway def1 so should be routing everything through the server (it's a big VPN and it's setup correctly).
So now there's an (ISP) ethernet network connection and a local (virtual) network. I tried to patch the leak by changing the ethernet connection's DNS settings to any of a number of static Google or OpenDNS etc. But that just causes complete loss of connectivity. And when I change the local network's DNS entries to static ones the DNS leak tests still report my ISP's DNS servers, so that doesn't work.
It's not an ISP thing, because when I disconnect the VPN and leave the DNS servers static (and not the automatic ones belonging to the ISP) everything works fine. How else am I supposed to patch the DNS leak, and maintain internet connectivity? What is going wrong?
I've been Googling for hours to no avail...