Find WiFi Passwords on Windows

 Open CMD

netsh wlan show profile

netsh wlan show profile name = "ENTER NETWORK NAME HERE" key=clear | find "Key Content"

Wireless Access Points

The old WRT-54G WAP work well as access point but they are old school and still cost $74.

People seem to love these Ubiquiti Networks UniFi AP Enterprise WiFi System units. These "smoke alarm" looking units are enterprise grade and powerful. I need to try.

Win7 Hotspot

Appears Gone Now

Turn Win7 into wifi hotspot. It seems I knew how to do this without extra software but I forgot. Here is a little portable program that might work. 

Be careful "installing" this thing. It tries to trick you into installing tool bars. Just choose the right options. The program itself doesn't really install but extracts to a folder.

I Can't Remember My WiFi Password!

If you can not remember your WiFi password but know someone who has logged on to that WiFi previously, you could be in luck. Download and run WirelessKeyView.

Should I use WPA? I can't connect to Internet!

Lesson #!. Be sure you don't have a splitter or extender fitting to join or extend your coaxial cable.

I am still using an old Belkin pre-N that only connected to N when using a Belkin NIC so basically it is a G. It has been a great G router. It started giving me fits on disconnects and then stopped connecting to the Internet completely despite having a local network connection working.

So I proceeded with a marathon of unplugging, hard reset, restore default, flushing this and that. Nothing worked so I connected to the modem directly and ordered the latest/greatest Asus RT-N56U (OK, I wanted one anyway).

If you need the RT-N56U utility try here and look for a file like this: UT_RT_N56U_4218.zip (the final number will change with version and firmware you are using).

I finally gave up and left the router unplugged over night. You guessed it. It worked in the morning. I'm guessing it took longer to clear the memory than I was giving it (or maybe not). I get a new router by default so win/win and I will have a backup router.

Started having fits again. Seems it was a simple but faulty joint for extending the coaxial cable. So fine, I will put my modem six inches from base board. Joints and splitters are never a good thing for coaxial cable. It worked for four years but not now.

I had been running WPA even though I hated the reduced speed. I decided to reevaluate the security/speed issue.

Without WPA

With WPA

Do I really value security that much? No. I am in a gated community and see two other connections weakly so how much risk do I really have?

So I decided to turn off broadcast and use MAC filtering. Something I should have done long ago. My speeds are back up. Hopefully Mrs. Johnson and her Paradise ssid is not a closet hacker.

Perhaps my shiny new Asus will be fast enough to not be adversely affected by WPA2. We shall see. If not, I will avoid WPA security, I am liking the MAC filtering.

Asus RTN56U With WPA2

Looks like the RTN56U does as well with WPA as the old Belkin did without. The speed was little different without WPA. Other testing does show my N speeds between 150/300 but download speeds are not much improved. My modem is Motorola SB5120. Maybe SB6120 would help. I've read mixed but impressive things about SB6120 on Comcast in some areas. I have one on a self in the frozen North and plan on showing it some sunshine.

I changed the admin password and could not log on so had to hard reset. Haven't tried it again yet. Maybe I put in a wrong password twice during setup. There is no obvious way to change the admin user name that I have seen ... peculiar. 

Hard reset finally worked this way: With power connected press the reset button for 10 seconds. Release the button and remove power for a minute. Power up.

The USB drive support is interesting. During setup I received an error that indicated an Asus server was not possible but it worked anyway. Not sure what happened or what I did. Again guilty of trying settings without documentation.

How about a New SB-6120 cable modem? In my area we do not have DOCSIS 3 so I see little or no improvement. SB-5120 is just as good.

One interesting thing, my wifi speed is better than my cabled speed. I assume this is due to the Realtek NIC adapter on my Asrock/AMD desktop. I should hook up my laptop hard wire and check. So here is the hard wire result now:

Looks like time to order a $30 Intel PCI-NIC. I will have to add $30 to the price when considering an Asrock motherboard from now on.

So, I bought an Intel EXPI9301CTBLK Network Adapter 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI-Express (I finally found use for PCI-Express) but it gave little if any speed increase. My Wireless constantly beats my hard wire speed. I had tried Auslogics Internet Optimizer 2.0.6 before trying to evaluate my speeds and possibly it set something wrong. I could have been too harsh on the Realtek NIC.

Connectify 2.1, Beta 4 finaly works

Where did you Connectify Today?: Connectify 2.1, Beta 4: "All right, it is time for us to serve up another fresh beta release of Connectify, available here:"

Comments: Looks like this beta works for me. First Connectify to work on my notebook. I have not tried them all but never could get them to work. My notebook has plain old Intel 5100 NIC which is in a ton of notebooks so don't know what the problem was.

I mysteriously started having trouble with Sleep crashing Windows 7 around the time I installed Connectify. Hard to tell if they were related. I will try uninstalling of course but would be interested to hear if anyone else had this happen. I use sleep often on my notebook so will be working on fixing it.

Wonders Never Cease - Windows Troubleshooter Fixed Wifi Connection - No Internet - Win7

I had quit trying Window's Troubleshooter for anything. Since 1982 (I know, Windows was not born yet) I have not had Window's Troubleshooter fix any problem. But here I sit in a motel and could not get connected. To be more specific, I was connected with a strong wifi signal but no internet. My old friend the impossible problem was back. I tried disabling IPv6 and no luck as usual. Just for kicks I tried the Troubleshooter that is part of the wifi connection window when you don't have an internet connection. TS told me the DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) was not turned on but "obtain IP address automatically" was clearly checked. TS offered to fix it and bingo, it worked. Some configuration must have been stuck, maybe the previous IP. Anyway I have no idea why this happens or how often. I also don't know another way to activate the DHCP without troubleshooter. Possibly setting a static IP and then changing back to automatic would have done it.

I wonder if this has been the problem the other times I have seen strong signal and connection but no internet? It is good to have way to fix this irritation. I hope it will consistently work but I'm not holding my breath.

Microsoft talks about a problem with the "broadcast flag" which is probably the issue. Here are some registry hacks, but I'm going to pass on them for now and rely on Trouble Shooter as long as it works. At least I know how to research the problem. Previous Googling for "no internet connection" (in all it's various iterations) did not lead me to this solution path.

Resetting ipconfig from an admin command prompt may have worked: Ipconfig /release and Ipconfig/renew

You can check the status of DHCP buy right clicking the wifi adapter > status > details.

Another thing to try is netsh winsock reset from an Admin command prompt. Or here is a little WinSockFix program.

I'm adding things as I think of them and may clean up this post later. This has turned into a jumbled mess but there may be an idea that works if you have a connection but can't get on the internet.

How To: Manually Setting Up the Linksys WRE54G Wireless-G Range Expander - Update

I would avoid these even if you can get them to link. Speed reduction is one reason. Getting them to link is another. I have had them work but I currently can not get it to work with WAP54G. I would try a Powerline solution.

Linksys' WRE54G Wireless-G Range Expander [reviewed here] is a WDS-based 802.11b / g repeater. Its purpose is to receive a signal from an Linksys WAP54G access point or WRT54G and WRT54GS wireless router and relay it to extend a wireless LAN's range.

How To: Manually Setting Up the Linksys WRE54G Wireless-G Range Expander - Update

Forum Posts on using more than one WRE54G

WAP54G IP=192.168.1.245 pwd=admin

WRE54G IP=192.168.1.240 (some versions use 192.168.1.245) pwd=admin

WRT54G IP=192.168.1.1 pwd=admin
Link for using as access point. or here
(I put Tomato on this and access setup fine but can't connect so have reverted to an old BEFSR41 v3 with WAP65G) Plan trying dd-wrt.

WAP54G flashing with DD-WRT

Cat 5 wiring diagram

How To Convert a Wireless Router into an Access Point

I used to have a FAQ that explained how to re-purpose a wireless router as an access point (AP). But it occurred to me that some folks might be able to use a little more of a step-by-step, so here it is. I'm going to use the virtually ubiquitous Linksys WRT54G as the object of our conversion

How To Convert a Wireless Router into an Access Point

Comments:

Sometimes I just want to index something I am going to do or try. This looks like a great little guide for setting up a router as an access point. I’m going to do it someday soon.

SmallNetBuilder is a good reference for wireless networking.

Connect To WiFi Windows 7

Finding the list of available networks in Win 7 can be a mystery to XP users. Right click the network icon in the lower right tray and "Open Network and Sharing Center."

This can be done from Control Panel also.

Now for the tricky part. It is easy to miss the "connect or disconnect" link.



Click it and the available connections will be displayed.

(Another "Where's Waldo" improvement by Microsoft's Seek and Find Division)