Hi,
This is not a request for help but a note to possibly help others if they experience the same issue.
This morning my iPhone (iOS 17.2.1) refused to connect to either of my VPNs (one private and one through Windscribe) or to my ISP direct (free in France).
I spent the morning looking into it and tried everything including resetting my network setting on the phone and rebooting all devices in sequence. It just would not connect.
At the same time, my wife's phone, my Mac and my iPad all connected fine to no matter what network or configuration (with or without VPN).
It had to be the phone.
Eventually, by going through every setting I could find I discovered that under Settings:VPN my phone was refusing to disconnect from the Windscribe connection. When I opened the information I found there is a switch for "Connect on Demand". I have no idea what it is meant to do but I disabled it and suddenly everything was working again.
I deleted it and opened Windscribe and it rebuilt it. If I log out and close the app everything is fine. if I swipe close the app without logging out, the problem recurs. The tick remains on Windscribe, the VPN is set up but with the app not running everything is blocked.
Using the Windscribe app SHOULD disable this setting when logging off from Windscribe but for some reason it did not using the swipe close technique.
Changing this setting solved the issue. Alternatively, if you have several VPN configurations, just moving to another configuration so the tick is not on Windscribe also resolves the issue (even if no VPN connection is made).
To avoid issues, always quit the Windscribe app properly.
Hope this might help others struggling in the same way.