Cisco ASDM-IDM Launcher: Stuck on "Contacting the device. Please wait..."

I recently ran into an issue on Windows 7 64-bit where ADSM-ISM Launcher failed to connect to my ASAs. Launching the application from a shortcut, and attempting to connect resulted in the launcher halting on "Contacting the device. Please wait...". And waiting didn't help. Opening the java console revealed another error which didn't get me any useful results on Google:

Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-0" java.lang.ClassCastException: sun.security.ssl.X509TrustManagerImpl cannot be cast to com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.X509ExtendedTrustManager

However, if I "re-installed" ASDM via the "dm-launcher.msi", the first time it was spawned by the installer, everything worked fine. Subsequent launches from the application shortcuts failed. A quick check with Process Explorer revealed the issue. The dm-launcher installer launched the java app using "C:\Windows\SysWOW64\javaw.exe", whereas the shortcut would use "C:\Windows\system32\javaw.exe".

The ultimate fix ended up being updating all my ASDM shortcuts to use "C:\Windows\SysWOW64\javaw.exe". Now everything is working great!

UPDATE 2/25/2013: So the pain continues with Java 7. If you have upgraded your JRE, you probably saw a recurrence of this issue. In that case, I recommend pointing your shortcut(s) directly to the version 1.6/6 JRE instead:
"C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin\javaw.exe"

Hope this helps someone else out there.

If you found this helpful, maybe you'd like to send a thank you from my wishlist?

18 thoughts on “Cisco ASDM-IDM Launcher: Stuck on "Contacting the device. Please wait..."”

  1. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Mine was working fine until I had a crash and had to reinstall Windows7 64-bit. Since then I've had to reinstall the ADSM anytime I wanted to use it. This works great.

  2. Felt the need to register and say thank you for this ... spent a good hour trying to troubleshoot this - never crossed my mind that Java would be the menace lurking in the corner!

  3. Hello all, can anyone please guide me on how to update the asdm shortcut to use the new path.
    thanks.

  4. Right-click on the icon for either "Cisco ASDM-IDM Launcher" or any of the shortcuts that it creates, and select "Properties".
    Under "Target", at the start of the line, change the java.exe path to "C:\Windows\SysWOW64\javaw.exe" and click "OK".
    Repeat for each shortcut that ASDM may have created.

  5. Thanks for your reply, but actually I already tried this process and it didn't work, since when I tried to add the path you mentioned a pop-up message appears with the following:
    The folder'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\javaw.exe' specified in the Start In box is not valid. Make sure that the folder exist and that the path is correct.
    If I remove the javaw.exe it saves but still having the same problem with ASDM Launcher.

  6. During your course of troubleshooting, you must have put "C:\Windows\SysWOW64\javaw.exe" in the "Start in:" field instead of the "Target:" field. Change "Start in" back to the path to your Cisco ASDM folder. On my system it's in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Cisco Systems\ASDM\" (within quotes).

    Verify again that you are using "C:\Windows\SysWOW64\javaw.exe" in the "Target" field. Mine looks like this:
    C:\Windows\SysWOW64\javaw.exe -Xms64m -Xmx256m -Dsun.swing.enableImprovedDragGesture=true -classpath lzma.jar;jploader.jar;asdm-launcher.jar;retroweaver-rt-2.0.jar com.cisco.launcher.Launcher

    Good luck!

  7. tks -- good post.
    also had trouble after a jre7 update
    but using w7/32bit here
    however, used similar process and got our local ASDM-launcher to work:

    target was:
    C:\Windows\System32\javaw.exe -Xms64m -Xmx512m -Dsun.swing.enableImprovedDragGesture=true -classpath lzma.jar;jploader.jar;asdm-launcher.jar;retroweaver-rt-2.0.jar com.cisco.launcher.Launcher

    changed to :

    "C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin\javaw.exe" -Xms64m -Xmx512m -Dsun.swing.enableImprovedDragGesture=true -classpath lzma.jar;jploader.jar;asdm-launcher.jar;retroweaver-rt-2.0.jar com.cisco.launcher.Launcher

  8. hi,
    i am also not able to launch asdm launcher its stuck only on contacting the device please wait.....
    previously asdm launcher was laoding software updates and then directly vanishing ..
    please help me thnx

  9. Is "Loading software updates" the exact message? I don't have access to an ASA any more, so I'm not certain I can help, but I'll see what I can do.

  10. Hi,
    while copying running-config to tftp server getting writting error timed out attempting to connect...
    using 3c daemon tftp s/w

  11. I'll reiterate for others, the quotes for path are important

    Thanks! This helped me out! I too took the time to register to say thanks. I love it when people take the time to write comments on my blog makes it all worth effort.

  12. ======== ANOTHER UPDATE ========== in my case i had Jre .6 and .7 installed. unistall the .7 and it worked with the old version