How to Find Wi-Fi Connection Passwords in Windows

Almost all the modern computers available in the market today come with a Wi-Fi network adapter. This allows you to easily connect to any of the Wi-Fi hot-spots (access points) that are easily available in public places like coffee shops, restaurants, educational institutes, offices etc. Some of these places give you a password to connect to the internet through the Wi-Fi access point. For example, many of the hotels give their customers free Wi-Fi access if you enter your room number as the password. If you forget your Wi-Fi password in Windows, then there is an easy way to recover it without using any special tools or utilities.

If you want to see the password (security key) of your Wi-Fi network connections in Windows 7, 8 or 8.1, then you can follow these simple steps:

  1. First of all you have to open an elevated command prompt. In Windows 8 and 8.1, it is very easy – just press Ctrl+X hotkey and then select Command Prompt or Command Prompt (Admin) from the menu that shows up. For Windows 7, you can read the instruction to open an elevated command prompt here.
  2. In the command prompt, type netsh wlan show profiles and press Enter. This will show you all the Wireless network profiles present in your computer. Note down the profile name of the Wi-Fi network, the password of which you want to recover.Wi-Fi Show Password in Windows
  3. Now type netsh wlan show profile name=”ProfileName” key=clear and press Enter. Here ProfileName is the name of the target network profile. Suppose the Wireless network profile is AT&T, then you have to type netsh wlan show profile name=”AT&T” key=clear and press Enter.Wi-Fi Show Password in Windows
  4. You would immediately see the details about that Wi-Fi network profile. Under the Security settings section, you would see the Key Content which is your Wi-Fi password. You can write this down and use it when setting up the Wi-Fi on another computer.
  5. You can repeat these steps for all the wireless network profiles available on your Windows PC.

Conclusion: If you have forgotten your Wi-Fi network password then you can easily recover the password, if you have saved it on your Windows computer. You do not need any third party programs, tools or utilities. The Windows command prompt can show you the Wi-Fi password in seconds.

2 comments

  1. I don’t know why but when I’m doing this then it is not showing key content…..its just showing the Authentication, cipher and security key……please help

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