OpenVPN odd in Parallels XP VM

I am running Windows XP in a Parallels VM. I use OpenVPN to access our company's VPN.

After the Mac sleeps overnight, the VPN in the Parallels VM will not let me connect to our database servers. The failure occurs in a non-deterministic way.

Here are the observations:

1. Wake up Mac to start work.
2. mysql client in VM will not connect to mysql databases
3. check ipconfig and usually the VPN IP address is listed as expected (sometimes it is not)
4. try to two of our database servers -- the resolution is "random" in that sometimes neither will resolve, or one will, or both will.
5. restart OpenVPN
6. sometimes this helps the pings to resolve to the expected IPs, sometimes not
7. if the IPs do not resolve, go back to step 5; continue doing this and eventually they will resolve
8. sometimes after a lot of tries, I reboot windows in the VM. However, this is not guaranteed to work, and still have to loop back through step 5. This morning it took probably 4 or 5 attempts.

Basic issue: the VPN loses its ability to connect to some VPN IPs, and restoring the ability takes a random sequence of restarting OpenVPN, the mysql client, and Windows.

By the way, this same configuration "just worked" in a VMWare VM.

Any ideas?