June 10, 2017 · ASDM JAVA CISCO

ASDM-IDM Launcher stuck on connecting?

Problem

Have you recently been stuck with trying to connect to ASDM? Something looking like the following image, along with enticing Java debug messages such as:
Java Console Debug Message: Error "java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class jdk.nashorn.internal.parser.Lexer" is caused by java.security.AccessControlException: access denied ("java.io.FilePermission" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre1.8.0_131\lib\ext\nashorn.jar" "read")

So have I, I've seen it happen under the following environments:

Since grew tired of waiting I did some "I really have no Idea what I am doing" troubleshooting on Java versions, JAVA paths, security levels but to no avail. Instead I found a network connection-related workaround, my knowledge of Java is not high enough to know if this is to be recommended but it solved it for me and it is possible to turn it off after using ASDM as well.

Solution

Under Control Panel\System and Security\Java we need to change the network settings under the General tab in the Java Control Panel. When using browser settings as per below, it will not be able to connect.

However, were we to change this to use *Direct Connection" instead it will work just fine.
It will however be a global change impacting all Java applications on the system, please have this in mind when implementing this workaround.