Just upgraded my late 2007 MacBook Pro Boot Camp partition to Win 8 RTM and was in the process of re-installing several apps. The Cisco VPN Client we use to connect to our corporate network was a bit finicky. There are a few workarounds to get it running on Win8.

First, you need to fix the following registry key to resolve error 442 Unable to enable virtual adapter:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\CVirtA\DisplayName

It will be set to something like “@oem8.inf,%CVirtA_Desc%;Cisco Systems VPN Adapter for 64-bit Windows” – drop everything before “Cisco Systems” from that value.

Next, when using certs, you cannot use your certificate from the local user store. Rather, import the certificate to the local computer store and delete it from your user store. This should resolve error 403 Unable to contact the security gateway.