Bye bye Cisco VPN 5 Client!

I have always had various problems running the Cisco VPN 5 that I have to have installed because a client that we work with requires this. The rest of the company runs the newer Cisco AnyNet Client and that has never been any issues with but the Cisco VPN Client of version 5.x and older always seems to have problems, especially when upgrading OS to later ones.

The latest issue I had was when I tried to use the MiraCast wireless display on my Surface Pro 3 running 8.1. Everywhere it said it should be possible to go to right side "Devices" then "Project" and it should be possible to see the line "Connect to a different display". First I thought I had an issue with running extended desktop but when I finally got it working on my Surface Pro 2 after uninstalling the Cisco VPN Client I realized that was the one that caused the problem.

Also the Window Music app think it is disconnected as soon as I activate the Cisco VPN, but that only happens when I actually have the tunnel up. For the "Connect to a different display" to disappears it is enough to only have the Cisco VPN Client installed in the system!

By pure coincidence I read a post about an alternative VPN Client that actually could use the Cisco's pcf file which I decided to have a try at. And it works! The client is the Shrew Soft VPN and can be found here:

Install it and choose import and point to the pcf and then you are up and running! There are some switches that could be turned on to remember the vpn user name etc but I haven't seen any issues at all with it so far.

My Surface Pro 3 also seems to be able to go down in sleep mode now which I always think was a problem with the Cisco VPN Client.