OpenVPNServiceInteractive is not started. Tasks requiring administrative access may not work

The problem is that the OpenVPNInteractiveService is set to startup Automatic (Delayed). To resolve this:

  1. Open Services
  2. Open 'OpenVPN Interactive Service'
  3. Change the Startup type: to Automatic.

Services List

The service incorrectly set to delayed automatic start:

Delayed Start

The service corrected to automatic (non-delayed) start:

Automatic Start

More Information

OpenVPN developers said to make sure the service is set to Automatic:

Also, as installed, the service start type is auto, make sure it has not been changed to delayed-auto.

OpenVPNInteractiveService is:

... a Windows system service which allows unprivileged openvpn.exe process to do certain privileged operations, such as adding routes.

From Windows Internals, 6th Edition page 327:

After handling auto-start services, the SCM calls ScInitDelayStart, which queues a delayed work item associated with a worker thread responsible for processing all the services that ScAutoStartServices skipped because they were marked delayed auto-start. This worker thread will execute after the delay. The default delay is 120 seconds, but can be overridden by the [sic] creating an AutoStartDelay value in HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control.