In this hi-tech world, you really don’t need to remember the passwords. Everything is saved automatically, like your Routers, E-mails, or any other site’s passwords, which are saved in browsers or used a third-party tool to save the passwords. There might be cases where we connect the WiFi to our laptop. But you don’t remember what the password was because you saved the password, and now Windows automatically connects to the WiFi router, or maybe your IT ISP support helped you set everything up. So at a later time, you might need to know what that password was; not everyone knows how to go into the router and change the password or know what password it was. In such a situation, we can use these handy little tools called WiFi Password Dump & WiFi Password Decryptor.
TIP: This post will show you how to find WiFi passwords in Windows 11 via Control Panel or CMD.
Recover WiFi Password in Windows
Our Windows operating system uses its built-in ‘Wireless Configuration Manager‘ which helps manage your Wireless connections. Depending upon the operating system, the Wireless Configuration Manager uses different techniques and different locations to save the WiFi passwords. According to an article by securityxploded.com the location for Windows XP or Server 2003, you’ll find the password in the following location.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WZCSVC\Parameters\Interfaces\{xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}
Each GUID represents different wireless devices and is stored under a value called ActiveSettings. Windows used its own technology called Windows Cryptography for encryption. And for Windows 10/8/7/Vista, you’ll find the configuration below:
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Wlansvc\Profiles\Interfaces\{xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}\{Random-GUID}.xml
Yes, instead of the registry ‘Wireless Configuration Manager’, uses an XML file instead of the registry key.
WiFi Password Dump
WiFi Password Dump is a simple command-line utility that will decrypt the encrypted password saved by Wireless Configuration Manager from the mentioned locations. It’s very simple and easy-to-use application.
- Search for this tool on securityxploded.com.
- Extract the files and run the install
- It will download some components of the Internet (Remember it will also prompt to install some Registry Cleaner, Free Proxy etc. You can click on Decline to cancel it)
- Once the install is complete, run the file
- You’ll get the command prompt with the passwords like the screenshot above.
WiFi Password Decryptor
If you want a GUI version instead of this command-line version, you can download WiFi Password Decryptor from the same developers. It does the exact same thing as WiFi Password Dump, but it will have a neat GUI screen.
Here, you find the list of passwords saved by your Wireless Configuration Manager on your Windows. Just right-click and click on Copy to get the password. You can even export to an HTML, Text, or XML format. Remember it will only recover the password if you have already saved the password in Windows. If you forgot the WiFi password even before entering it in Windows, then you may need to find other tools that will recover the password directly from your router. You can search for this tool at https://securityxploded.com/wifi-password-decryptor.php.
I guess this tool will help users who use Laptops in different locations. Let us know your feedback about this tool.
