Fix for Windows 7 forgetting wireless security password

I’ve been going nuts on my new Dell notebook.  Every time I attempted to reconnect to many of my home access points, I would get re-prompted for the wireless security key (some WEP, some WPA).  Windows wasn’t remembering my wireless security key.  I couldn’t find any way to get them to save.  When I checked in the Wireless Center, only one connection was showing up (the one that saved the key information).  Googling wasn’t coming up with much, other than suggestions to turn off “IEEE authentication” (I think what was meant was the IEEE 802.11 service management — that is, the WLAN service) or run MSConfig and turn off the adapter service.

The last one gave me a clue.  The machine was installed (built by my IT support) with Intel PROSet/Wireless WiFi manager.  I’d always ignored it, and just used Windows wifi management.  Well … mistake.  It turns out that if you have Intel PROSet running, you need to use it to start and stop all connections — otherwise, even if you’re exclusively using the Windows manager to start/stop, it won’t save your connection information.  Switching to just using the Intel manager to start/stop solved my problem.

7 thoughts on “Fix for Windows 7 forgetting wireless security password”

  1. Thanks – that sorted a similar problem I’ve been having.
    Switched back to let Windows manage the WiFi…

    A 🙂

  2. tathamg,

    You are my hero. I had the exact issue you did. I went to the Intel proset wireless web site and downloaded the most current version of the program. I had 15.1 and the current is 15.3. I assume it is now using it instead of the windows program. Now I can see all the previous sites I have connected to and the passwords are there. Thanks a million.

  3. Well i have both WINDOWS and INTEL working all i did was stop using the windows to connect (actually disconnected using it) then let the intel software do its trick. and it worked first time.!!!

    thanks

  4. Thanks!! That was the right clue for my issue:
    Wifi password forgotten every time I boot, I had to enter it every time to make the connection. After that in Windows 7 properties all look fine, and just the same as on my 2nd PC.
    Here it was some Sitecom LAN utility software that got installed. After adding my network here, it worked all fine.
    I had looked at a good number of other threads at other sites that did not solve the issue…

  5. Finally! You solved my problem as well.

    It was strange because my computer would automatically* connect to wifi just fine and remember passwords (not prompt me to enter a password). It was whenever I manually* selected a wifi to connect to that it would prompt me to enter a password, even if I had connected before.

    But this was fixed just by switching intelproset wifi to windows only controlled wifi. Or in your case, the opposite was the fix.

  6. My laptop (Thinkpad T420s) keeps forgetting wifi passwords, but only if I manually choose a different wifi access point.
    The intel wifi software in the Control Panel tells me that no supported intel wifi adapter was found. Strangely all the intel drivers I installed were hosted by Lenovo, for this exact machine.

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