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.