Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client 3.1.03103. The VPN Agent service is not responding

Solution 1:

It somehow started working again. For the sake of helping other people in my same position I will add the step I took that might have solved it:

A few months ago I installed Spybot Search & Destroy and used the immunization tool that came with it. From my searches on this topic I noted some people mentioning that the Cisco client needed to adapt a host file to work. Apparently Spybot decided that the client was not allowed to do this. After undoing the immunization and uninstalling Spybot the vpnagent service magically started working!

I'm not 100% sure this was the actual solution since my VPN worked before even when the immunization was still on. However I suspect that the conflict between Spybot and Avira antivirus might have something to do with this non-deterministic behavior.

Solution 2:

I found this article after receiving this error - seemingly out of nowhere. The steps that resolved my issues were:

1) Open Windows Explorer
2) Navigate to c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc
3) Move all files in the root to a new folder you create - any name is fine, I used 'old'.
4) Authorize the move in User Account Control.
5) Start Cisco AnyConnect client. You should not receive the error message.
6) Completely exit Cisco AnyConnect client.
7) Move HOSTS from 'old' back to c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc
8) Start Cisco AnyConnect client. You should not receive the error message.

These steps are different than the ones proposed earlier in the thread - no restart into Safe Mode was required.

Solution 3:

Wanting to clean up my Windows 7 computer, I shut off several annoying processes and hosts via Spybot and since Cisco started the "VPN service is not available" error message.

I then realized that manually starting the vpnagent.exe (or related) in C:\Program Files (x86)\Cisco\Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client did not launch anything at all.

Therefore I downloaded version 5.0.07 of the Cisco VPN Client (from WSU Page) in the attempt to repair that malfunctioning VPN agent and solved the problem for me.

After install, AnyConnect did not show any error any more (no system restart).