With the credit going to Daniel Noakes and his blog post, he has solved a potential problem with the Cisco AnyConnect VPN client and Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Windows 7 did not have these issues on installation, but with Windows 8, one area within the registry gets modified causing issues that will give you an error code as shown below:
As Daniel mentions, an event log may get logged in event viewer, but the Cisco Any Connect VPN Virtual Miniport Adapter for Windows x64 isn’t enabled. While this adapter should normally be disabled when not in use, I noticed in my case that I didn’t even have any VPN adapter in my network connections.
The root of the issue is in the registry for this one. If you navigate to the following location you will notice under the DisplayName string value is incorrect. It has some additional data in the string that talks about a .ini or .sys file and that shouldn’t be in that string value. So modifying the DisplayName to say this:
Cisco AnyConnect VPN Virtual Miniport Adapter for Windows x64
The full path along with the correct string value should be:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\vpnva]
“DisplayName”=”Cisco AnyConnect VPN Virtual Miniport Adapter for Windows x64″
**Windows 7 Fix**
For Windows 7 machines, the registry key was under “ControlSet001? instead of “CurrentControlSet” folder.
Full path in registry – [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\vpnva]
Once you restart the client by closing out of the Cisco AnyConnect VPN client, you should then see that you would be able to connect using your client and also looking in network connections should now show the adapter correctly and you should be ready to go! Thank you again Daniel for the initial find and your blog post.
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Steve
March 14, 2012 at 5:23 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You guys are the BOMB!!!!
It worked for me too!!!!
THANKS A MILLION!
Jeff
March 14, 2012 at 9:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
No problem! The credit goes to Dan because he was the original one who found the solution, but it’s a great fix to get AnyConnect up and running. Hope you are liking Windows 8! Thanks!
Bogdan
March 27, 2012 at 12:47 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I know, I know … I should thank to Dan … but google found your site first, so:
thank you!
and thanks to Dan too!
Gopal
March 28, 2012 at 2:30 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Hi,
Thanks so much Dan and Jeff! I upgraded to windows 8 on 2 machines – personal and work. The outlined solution worked perfectly on my home machine.
However I could not find the specified registry key on my work machine (windows 7 professional). I found that on this machine the registry key was under “ControlSet001″ instead of “CurrentControlSet” folder.
Full path in registry – [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\vpnva]
The same fix worked i.e. changing the display name. Wanted to pass this along for anyone who runs into this.
admin
March 28, 2012 at 4:47 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Glad to hear it’s working for everyone! I will add that as an edit for Windows 7! Thanks!
Steve
April 2, 2012 at 10:49 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Thanks a bunch!! Worked like a charm!
David
November 10, 2012 at 11:00 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Thanks for this fix. I have to do this in the Production version of Windows 8 Pro to get out Cisco AnyConnecit to work.