The problem of a steady-state slip pulse of finite size between dissimilar materials is studied. It is shown that for a Coulomb friction law, there is a continuous set of possible solutions for any slip propagation velocity and any slip length. These solutions are, however, nonphysical because they show a singular behaviour of the slip velocity at one extremity of the pulse, which implies a crack-like behaviour. In order to regularize these solutions, we introduce a modified friction law due to Prakash and Clifton (Experimental Techniques in the Dynamics of Deformable Solids, Vol. AMD-165, pp. 33–48; J. Tribol. 120 (1998) 97), which consists in introducing in the Coulomb friction law a relaxation time for the response of the shear stress to a sudden variation of the normal stress. Then, we show that even for a slip velocity-dependent characteristic time, the degeneracy of the solutions is not suppressed and a physical pulse is not selected. This result shows the absence of steady state self-healing pulses within the modified friction law and is consistent with recent finite-difference calculations (J. Geophys. Res. 107 (2002) 10).