There isn’t currently a version of Cisco’s VPN client that supports Windows 8, and after installation I received an error message complaining that the “VPN Client failed to enable virtual adapter.”.
Fortunately, there is a way to get this “legacy” VPN client to work, with a small registry change:
- Open up the registry editor by typing regedit in Run prompt
- Browse to the Registry Key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Services\\CVirtA
- Edit the DisplayName entry and remove the leading characters from the value data upto “%;” i.e.
- For x86, change the value data from something like “@oem8.inf,%CVirtA_Desc%;Cisco Systems VPN Adapter” to “Cisco Systems VPN Adapter”
- For x64, change the value data from something like “@oem8.inf,%CVirtA_Desc%;Cisco Systems VPN Adapter for 64-bit Windows” to “Cisco Systems VPN Adapter for 64-bit Windows”
Then you can try connecting again – this did the trick for me.