Follow these easy methods to quickly retrieve your forgotten Wi-Fi passwords
If you are an avid computer user, you may have connected to various wireless networks while at home or on the move. However, there may be a possibility to forget the passwords of these wireless networks, even though they are still saved in your system.
Hence, it is very important to recover those keys, if you still have access to these Wi-Fi networks and have plans to reinstall Windows or if you just want to give Internet access to a friend. Not everybody is aware how to go through the Windows settings to do this, but that should not be a deterrent for you to follow the complex instructions.
The fact that there are software applications such as WirelessKeyView, Wi-Fi Password Decryptor and SterJo Wireless Passwords that allows you go to the easier route should be a respite. In this manner, you can recover the forgotten Wi-Fi passwords just like the Windows product key.
You do not need the above three utilities, as all of them are portable. All you need to do is simply double-click their .exe files to launch the tools, whether you run them from the local disk or store them on a USB flash drive.
Wi-Fi Password Decryptor
Click the Start Recovery button once Wi-Fi Password Decryptor is started to set a computer scan. This process doesn’t take long, after which you can view the Wi-Fi Name (SSID), Security Settings (like WPA2PSK AES), Type (PassPhrase), Password Key (Hex) and Password Key.
To open a menu, right-click an entry and Copy Password (the one shown in the Password Key column). Or else, you can click the Export button and show the destination and file name where you can save all information to file (.html, .txt or .xml format).
You can also download the installer version of Wi-Fi Password Decryptor here
SterJo Wireless Passwords
The saved wireless passwords and the SSID (Name), Password, Authentication type (like WPA2PSK) and Encryption mode (like AES) for each network are automatically detected after starting SterJo Wireless Passwords.
To open a menu, right-click an entry and Copy Selected Password. Then, paste the selected password into a text document so that you do not lose it. Open the File menu and click Save As… or press Ctrl+S, if you want to save the information of all entries. You can also instruct SterJo Wireless Passwords where you want to store the text document (.txt format) and what you want to name it as.
You can also download the installer version of SterJo Wireless Passwords here
WirelessKeyView
The startup will have all the wireless networks that are automatically identified by the app. You can check out the Network Name (SSID), Adapter Name, Adapter GUID, Key Type (like WPA2-PSK), Key (Hex), Key (ASCII), Authentication type, (like WPA2PSK), Encryption type (like AES), Connection type (like ESS), Last modified date and time, and Filename (with full path) for each Wi-Fi network.
The most important is the Key (Ascii) column. To select it, click an entry and right-click to Copy Key (Ascii) or press F8. Next, you can paste the key in a text editor and save the document (.txt, .html, .csv or .xml) for safety.
If you want to Save Selected Items to file with all information exhibited, you can open the File menu to select this option or press Ctrl+S. The wireless keys of the current logged-on user will be loaded by WirelessKeyView by default. However, you can ask it to Load the wireless keys from external instance of Windows installation. To browse for the Windows folder using the tree view, click the … button next to the Windows Directory field, and click Ok.
You can also read this alternative article on This is how you can recover your lost WiFi password with ease
