Microsoft, Troubleshooting

Cisco VPN CSGina.dll Failed To Load

59 Comments

Here’s the full error:
The Login User Interface DLL CSGina.dll failed to load. Contact your system administrator to replace the DLL, or restore the original DLL.

This happens when you uninstall, and sometimes install, the Cisco VPN client. Cisco VPN client adds a registry key that disables fast user switching and loads the client before booting into Windows.

The fix below requires editing your registry files. If you have no idea what a registry file is, you probably shouldn’t be editing them. If you edit incorrectly your computer may refuse to boot. Here’s the quick fix:

1.) Reboot the machine
2.) Press F8 to load up the boot options menu for Windows
3.) Select Safe Mode and then select your Windows Installation
4.) After Windows loads into safe mode, it’ll ask if you want to continue working in Safe Mode. Select Yes.
5.) Start >> Run >> “regedit” (without the quotes). Press Enter.
6.) Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
7.) Look for the GinaDLL Key
8.) Select and delete this key. DO NOT delete the entire Winlogon folder of keys.
9.) Close Regedit and reboot the machine

***EDIT***
This is actually the most popular post on it.thelibrarie.com! Awesome!

59 thoughts on “Cisco VPN CSGina.dll Failed To Load”

  1. I have a similar problem except that the interface dll is called srvipeg.dll. Your instructions got me into Safe Mode (thankyou) but I can’t find srviped anywhere. Any ideas???

    Ray

  2. srvipeg.dll? What software was installed to get that file? You can always search the registry for the file, but a normal Windows XP installation shouldn’t have that DLL. Are you having a problem with a program loading up before the login prompt?

  3. I dont have a lot of ‘behind the scenes’ computer knowledge. When I start the computer the Windows screen comes up with te blue line moving After about 10 secs this is replaced with the error message we are discussing. Following the instructions above I have got into Winlogon but there is no srvipeg.dll file in there. I dont understand about a program loading before the login prompt. Is there any other way that I could find this file?

    Thanks

  4. You could always search the registry for the dll and see where it’s laying. I wouldn’t just go around deleting random keys though. You might be better off doing a repair on your windows installation.

  5. I’ve looked in the registry and can see it. It is not a windows file. Is there any way to search.

    Thanks

  6. If you can see it in the registry, maybe try either renaming the key or deleting it. Once again, it might be better to do a Windows Repair on your system.

  7. Sorry bsdman – my note above should have said I CAN’T see it. It was a critical typing error unfortunately.Is there any method by which to identify this file or and programs that would help me find it.

    I have looked at the Error Log and there is a whole lot of errors related to a device not loading and several other things.

    I think I need to wipe the whole thing and start again.

    Ray

  8. I tried to access the boot menu but when I clicked F8 my laptop didn’t respond at all except for a little flash. Is this the same for computers and laptops?

  9. Christy,

    Every computer running Windows allows you to press the F8 button to pull up the “safe mode” dialog screen. Make sure you press it after the BIOS screen but before the Windows loading screen. I usually end up pressing F8 a bunch of times in rapid succession right after the BIOS is finished. You can also try to force a safe mode screen by turning off the power on the computer before Windows is done loading. That will simulate a crash of the system.

  10. Continuing with my srvipeg.dll problem. General opinion is that it’s networking or a network device failing to load because the srvipeg file is missing or corrupted Is it possible to turn all networking options off to see if the computer boots up normally?

    Ray

  11. As long as safe mode works, anything is possible. You can uninstall the network card(s) and see if that frees up the issue. Or open up msconfig and disable anything non-microsoft related.

  12. I found the information very helpful, and the Problem is now solved. So thank you very much.

  13. I am not able to scroll down to select safemode option. I want to get in to safemode to use regedit command to deleted CSGina.DLL Key

    Can any one help me out?

    Thanks and regards
    Iqbal

  14. I had that issue on several computers. If the computer has PS/2 and USB ports, sometimes the system requires you use a PS/2 keyboard to select the safemode option. This fix is assuming you’re using a USB and not PS/2 keyboard already.

  16. I have this problem but I don’t have a local logon account for safe mode, and safe mode networking requires this file to be there.

    Also have PGP desktop disk encryption on it so I can’t even use winternals, since it can’t access the damn disk.

    looks like a full wipe coming up.

  17. Just did it. Worked right away, thans a lot 🙂
    Wonder how such a big error can come just from uninstalling the client… the client gave med e BOD whenever I tried to connecto with vpn. Not exactly a good experience. Thanks again

  18. Hi there, going to back to CSGina.dll issue, I did a manual unistall for Manual client, as it wouldn’t remove from the Add/remove. I deleted dne2000.sys and renamed CSGina.dll (don’t ask why i dare -:)).
    Since that machine won’t send recive packets on network and you can’t connect to the machine.
    I have resoted dne2000.sys and also renamed CSGina.dll back to original. still same can’t send/recive anything over network, it doesn show LAN is connected.

    any help please

  19. I recently quit my job, but got to keep the laptop my work had provided me. I uninstalled Cisco VPN, having no need for it at home, and got the dll error message. When I boot up in safe mode I get the Windows logon screen, but Windows tells me that the password is incorrect (when it’s the same password I’ve always used and worked before the uninstall.) Therefore I can not get to the regedit to delete the dll file.

    Does anyone know what I can do?

    Thanks in advance!

  23. You rock!! This was just what I needed. Am decommissioning a work laptop (by myself;-p) and the Cisco VPN got in my way. THANKS!!

  24. This really works! I hadn’t used my comuter in over 2 months because I couldn’t find a solution. But this worked like magic and took no longer than 10 minutes to do. Thank you!!

  27. I couldn’t get in to safemode because it kept giving the same error message their. However, doing a windows xp install repair managed to fix the safemode not logging in. So after I got in to safemode I did the registry fix and resolved the problem.

    I hope this helps

  28. Geek — I had the same problem with the CSGina error preventing the system from coming up even in Safe mode, but using Safe Mode with Command Prompt worked. Thanks to the Original Poster for this great info.

    And by the way, a pox on Cisco for not fixing this problem by now. Come on, guys. Apparently this has been going on for a couple years now — WTF? I wonder how many people out there who aren’t computer-literate enough to search out the solution have had to pay someone a hundred bucks to fix it for them. This is the kind of unnecessary crap that makes non-geeks hostile to computers.

  29. Wow! That completely fixed it in 5 minutes. I was worked up over nothing! Thank you again and again 🙂

  31. This is right on time!!! Followed the instructions and it took about 5 minutes from F8 to the complete reboot. I would only sugguest that the entire thread is visible for people who are not really tech savvy. I will re-post it for all to see. Isn’t the Internet wonderful!!!

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

  34. hello

    my problem is that my PC refuse to boot in safe mode, i have the same message in safe mode!!!

    Help !

  35. Hedi, make sure you choose vanilla “Safe Mode” and not “Safe Mode with Networking” and have a local admin account handy.

  39. Thank you for your wonderful suggestion, it worked like a charm.
    After uninstalling VPN client and rebooting for the first time, I received the following error: User Interface Failure with a bluescreen and no way to get to the login. This registry fix saved me hours of time.
    Very much appreciated!

  40. Had exactly the same problem, followed advice posted above and it worked like a charm! Thanks so much for posting, and I echo Doug’s pox on Cisco. Apparently they haven’t fixed the problem yet, several years into the error.

  43. Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssss, goooood!!! Thank you so much. I appreciate your valuable help, it works OK

  45. hey, thanks a lot for this info! this is so stupid of cisco not clean up after uninstalling its software! just sloppy.

  46. Just want to say thanks. I’d uninstalled Cisco’s VPN and was shocked when I saw this error on reboot. Polo is right. Poor quality control on the install/uninstall script by Cisco. Your help has been a lifesaver. Thanks again.

  48. Worked like a charm. My Windows XP was missing VPNGina.DLL file. I was getting this error:
    “the logon user interface dll vpngina.dll failed to load”

    Hopefully, more people can find this post and use the following procedure I did to fix my XP.
    Just do the same as what the author of this post suggested, but remove the reg entry VPNGina.DLL instead.

  50. Great post, I was hoping it would work but I had a nasty wrinkle, yet found a solution. Hopefully someone may benefit from this comment.

    For a network laptop that I now own, my symptoms were as follows after uninstalling Cisco VPN which I no longer needed:

    1) Same CSGina.dll problem described in this thread (no login prompt in regular mode)

    2) Login prompt appeared in safe mode but my credentials were not accepted (and all guesses of admin login and password were tried) — so I was completely locked out of the machine. But if I could get in, I could delete the registry key described earlier in this thread. So…

    3) I created a UBCD4Windows CD (google this and you can build it from a working computer). It provides a complete bootable environment on disk.

    4) Booted the sick machine from this CD. The laptop luckily was configured to search the CD drive first before booting from the hard drive.

    5) Launched regedit and I discovered that the KEY WAS NOT THERE — so there was nothing for me to delete and so I could not fix the problem given the procedure described.

    6) But since I had access to files on my hard drive via booting from UBCD4Windows, I did something suggested on another site: I went to WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 and copied msgina.dll to csgina.dll (the latter was missing). Rebooted and that worked!

    NOTE: I had seen it claimed elsewhere that this copy of msgina.dll to csgina.dll can be done via the Recovery Console that you can access from the WINDOWS XP installation disk if you have it. So you don’t need to construct or obtain the UBCD4Windows disk like I did.

    QUESTION(S): Does anyone know why the registry key that I was hunting for was not present? Or why the problem still existed even though the key wasn’t there? It seems the uninstall correctly removes csgina.dll (since that is a Cisco file), but something in the registry is still dependent on it being there. What might it be? Also, why does the copy that I did work at all?

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