Cisco anyconnect 4.10.03104, cannot start cisco vpn service in Win10

[hhenryy]

My cisco anyconnect secure mobility client failed to connect. I am on Windows 10 pro 20H2 version, and firwall & network protection are off. 

It says "the VPN service is not available. Exiting." every time I start cisco program. 

And I try to start the cisco vpn service in Windows Services.msc, but the status just turns from running to stopped right away. 

Also tried uninstall and reinstall, but still cant start the vpn service, but I have no problem using cisco client on my android and Mac under the same network environment. 

I wonder what might be the reason?

[Aref Alsouqi]

When you tried to uninstall and reinstall, did you make sure these folders have been removed as well? "C:\ProgramData\Cisco\Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client" and "C:\Users\<you username>\AppData\Local\Cisco\Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client". If not I would try to uninstall again, removing those folders manually, reboot, and finally reinstall.

[hhenryy]

I tried your method, but still not working...

[Aref Alsouqi]

Does this happen with other colleagues laptop or only your? I know you mentioned you don't have DART, but just to double check try to click on AnyConnect cog icon, is there any button on the left bottom side called "Diagnostics"? another thing probably I would do is to create a new Windows user account with admin rights and see if AnyConnect works from there.

[hhenryy]

Nope, it only happens to this particular PC as I just tried with a different PC and it works fine..

[Aref Alsouqi]

Must be a software that is running on that PC that is causing this issue. I would check the Windows logs and see if they might give any idea.

[hhenryy]

I open msconfig.exe and under services, I see Cisco Anyconnect is disabled. And I can't enable it. I tried upgrading Win10 to the most updated version, but the issue is still not fixed.

[hhenryy]

I also tried to add another admin.user, and install cisco anyconnect, but I got same problem.

[Mike.Cifelli]

I would recommend installing DART on the troubled client, generating a DART bundle, and parsing AnyConnect logs as the DART bundle may shed light in the overall issue.  

[hhenryy]

I dont think i have access to download DART, I had my cisco client downloaded from my University website, and they dont have DART. 

[bravotom99]

I ran into a very similar issue on 20H2....ONLY 20H2.  this started happening after Windows update KB5010342 was installed.  What we found is that KB5010342 AND WDAC/applocker even in audit mode caused an issue with AnyConnect service.  We uninstalled KB5010342 and everything started working again.  We are still trying to figure out why that occurs

[hhenryy]

I upgrade to 21H2, and still get the same problem.

I had KB5010342 update before I upgraded to 21H2, but I think it would be deleted automatically when I upgraded to 21H2 right?

[AP123]

Any news about this? several users got the KB5010342 update without issues here, some were failing leaving anyconnect unusable.

While upgrading to 4.10.05085 it broke on another machine now, as expected also reinstalling the older 4.8 Version didn't help anymore

Starting the service manually a few minutes after the error message it worked?  (not sure if the guy had local admin rights)

Starting the service too early indicated an issue with ICS.

This time affected a user which had Hyper V turned on. Not sure about the others.  They claimed about a pretty slow user experience after upgrading to KB5010342. A rumor in a MS community Thread said a fix may likely be available 3rd week of may with CU preview for June