Question : Could not start the IPSEC Services on local machine

Attempting to trouble-shoot a Netscreen-Remote VPN connection and trying to manually start IPSEC Services and getting "Could not start the IPSEC Services on local machine - Error 10048...." The VPN is connecting successfully but the log indicates that packets are not getting through (returning). Error message "Inbound package failed validation...." in the VPN log. IPSEC is enabled in the router settings for this computer.

Answer : Could not start the IPSEC Services on local machine

his is a common error you get from winsock when you are out of ports on the client (load generating) machine. Windows (NT/2K/XP) has a default of 5000 ports that can be used for socket connections. 1,024 of these are reserved, which leaves a total of 3,976 ports available. If you see “10048” errors you will need to increase this value in your registry, under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services/Tcpip/Parameters, add or modify the “MAXUserPort” value. This value must be between 5000 and 65534. (Be sure to reboot after this change).  

Or the problem could occur whenever you have another VPN client software installed on the system. The most noted conflicting clients are: AOL, Cisco VPN, SSH – Sentinel and PGP. Removing these clients will in most cases resolve the issue.