Find Cached WiFi Passwords in Windows
You don’t have to work long in a computer support role before you get the question ” What is my WiFi password” and this can sometimes mean, you have to reset the WiFi password on the router\access point, as the password is stared out for security reasons and then wait for the fall out of calls after.
If there is a windows box still connected to the WiFi you can run the commands below to find out what the cached WiFi password is….
Just open up command prompt and type.
netsh wlan show profile
This will list all the WiFi profiles that PC has cached.
Profiles on interface WiFi: Group policy profiles (read only) --------------------------------- <None> User profiles ------------- All User Profile : BTHub3-NGDF All User Profile : TALKTALK-7AD3FR All User Profile : It-Hurts-When-IP
Then just add any of the profiles to the end of your command like so.
netsh wlan show profile BTHub3-NGDF
This will show you all the cached profile details that you have on the WiFi access point but when you get down to the Security key it just says Present.
Security settings ----------------- Authentication : WPA2-Personal Cipher : CCMP Authentication : WPA2-Personal Cipher : Unknown Security key : Present
If you just add key=clear to the end of the command it shows the full WiFi password under the security settings…
netsh wlan show profile BTHub3-NGDF key=clear
Security settings ----------------- Authentication : WPA2-Personal Cipher : CCMP Authentication : WPA2-Personal Cipher : Unknown Security key : Present Key Content : PassW0rd
There are a lot of programs out there that can do this for you but i guess they just run this command and output the contents in a easy to use program, for me this is a lot simpler.
