hey guys, i'm trying to setup a VPN server with intent of being able to connect on my laptop, really for the sole purpose to see if i can get this cable company app to work when i'm away from my home network(only supposed to be able to use it when your at home)

pptpd is installed and running, i added local ip and remote ip, username and password to their respective .conf files.

i'm using a ddns site called no-ip and i have port 1723 forwarded in my router to the linux machines ip. unless its getting blocked by cablevision.

Linux box is CentOS 6.4, laptop is windows 8(i know lol)

in the windows box i create the vpn connection1 with my ddns domain name which is supposedly being forwarded as per the site, and vpn2 is using my ip address from whatsmyip.com.

both fail to connect with Error 800 saying that "the vpn tunnels failed". as i'm typing this i just got error 807 saying the server was interupted "sometimes due to latency or server is at capacity"

in windows vpn connection properties i have it set tp pptp connect whether it is encrypted or not.

For pptp to work you need firewall to allow GRE as well.
This is a protocol, not a port, which sometimes makes it a bit difficult to handle.
Honestly, I don't know if you can forward it the way you do but my guess is "no".
If nobody else can shed some light on this I can look further into it tomorrow.

I have seen pptp in action and it was a headache for the admin to set up the firewall with gre and whatnot.

Why not use openvpn instead - its a very secure and very reliable cross platform vpn server. I use it on Windows and Linux and works equally well.