Cisco AnyConnect – VPN establishment capability from remote desktop is disabled

If you are trying to to use Cisco AnyConnect through a Windows Virtual PC and receiving the following message

VPN establishment capability from remote desktop is disabled.  A VPN connection will not be established.

This is what I did to get it functional.

Go to your virtual machines and edit the Settings.

  • Under Networking, ensure that you are using Share Networking (NAT)
  • Under Integration Features, ensure that Enable at startup is NOT checked

Now, if you launch your virtual machine Cisco AnyConnect should connect (at least it did for me).

That said, having to disable the Integration Features in this manner, to me, is a serious PITA!  You can’t even copy/pastes or utilize your main PC’s hard drive to access files…  I don’t know the underlying issues, but this to me is a MAJOR problem.