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MS-Windows Troubleshooting


error 781: The encryption attempt failed because no valid certificate was found


Symptom:

When trying to establish a VPN connection to a computer the following error is encountered:

Connecting to ...

Error 781: The encryption attempt failed because no valid certificate was found.

Possible Causes and Remedies:

  • This error can indicate simply that it was not possible to reach the VPN server across the network.
    • Check that the name or IP-address of the VPN server has been correctly specified.
    • Try pinging the VPN server, if this fails then consult the notes on general network connectivity problems.
  • This error normally indicates that there is a problem with either the computer certificate at the VPN server or that there is a problem with the VPN servers IPSec Policy Agent service.
  • This error can also occur due to an intermittent problem (possibly a windows bug, but at either the client or server end - I don't know). If everything else looks okay then try it again and it will sometimes succeed.

These notes have been tested with Windows 2000.



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