KB26656 - Pulse Secure Desktop Client installation fails on Windows PCs due to the maximum number of installed filter drivers

This article describes a possible cause and solution for a Pulse Secure Desktop Client installation failure on Windows PCs.

When attempting to install Pulse Secure Desktop Client on a Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8 client, the installation fails with the following error messages found in the Pulse Secure Desktop Client debuglog.log:

jnprnaca!InstallVirtualAdapterManager: RETURNING 0x643
CustomAction A_InstallVAMGR.34C340EE_B1F9_442D_901E_D43CD5E6BD8E returned actual error code 1603 (note this may not be 100% accurate if translation happened inside sandbox)

DIFXAPP: ERROR: Error 0x8004A029 encountered while installing the inf 'C:\windows\system32\DRVSTORE\jnprna_1808440A6CA1BF0714E071DD6E4A2B294191F136\jnprna.inf'. Unable to install network component 'jnprna'

It is not possible for the Pulse Secure installer application to identify why Windows did not allow the installation. One common reason for the installation to fail is that the maximum number of filter drivers that is allowed by the OS has been reached. If this occurs, Pulse Secure Desktop Client cannot install because there are no available filter drivers for Pulse Secure Desktop Client to use.

Windows 7 is hard coded to allow 14 filter drivers, but it is set to '8' by default in the Windows registry.  You can modify Windows to use the maximum number of filter drivers by setting the value of the following registry key to '14'.  

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network\MaxNumFilters