Chances are you have a Wi-Fi network at home, or live close to one (or more) that tantalizingly pops up in a list whenever you boot up your laptop or look at the phone.
The problem is, if there’s a lock next to the network name (AKA the SSID, or service set identifier), that indicates security is activated. Without a password or passphrase, you’re not going to get access to that network, or the sweet, sweet internet that goes with it.
Perhaps you forgot the password on your own network, or don’t have neighbors willing to share the Wi-Fi goodness. You could just go to a café, buy a latte, and use the “free” Wi-Fi there. Download an app for your phone like WiFi Map(Opens in a new window) (available for iOS(Opens in a new window) and Android(Opens in a new window)), and you’ll have a list of millions of hotspots with free Wi-Fi for the taking (including some passwords for locked Wi-Fi connections if they’re shared by any of the app’s users).
However, there are other ways to get back on the wireless. Some require such extreme patience that the café idea is going to look pretty good. Read on if you can’t wait.
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Windows Commands to Get the Key
This trick works to recover a Wi-Fi network password (AKA network security key) only if you’ve forgotten a previously used password.
It works because Windows creates a profile of every Wi-Fi network to which you connect. If you tell Windows to forget the network, it also forgets the password. In that case, this won’t work. But few people ever explicitly do that.
It requires that you go into a Windows Command Prompt with administrative privileges. Click the Star Menu, type “cmd” (no quotes), and the menu will show a Command Prompt; right-click that entry and select Run as administrator. That’ll open the black box full of text with the prompt inside—it’s the line with a right-facing arrow at the end, probably something like C:\WINDOWS\system32>. A blinking cursor will indicate where you type. Start with this:
netsh wlan show profile
The results will bring up a section called User Profiles—those are all the Wi-Fi networks (aka WLANs, or wireless local area networks) you’ve accessed and saved. Pick the one you want to get the password for, highlight it, and copy it. At the prompt below, type the following, but replace the Xs with the network name you copied; you only need the quotation marks if the network name has spaces in it, like “Cup o Jo Cafe.”
netsh wlan show profile name=”XXXXXXXX” key=clear
In the new data that comes up, look under Security Settings for the line Key Content. The word displayed is the Wi-Fi password or key you are missing. (If you don’t like the command line, there’s third-party password recovering software like Cain & Abel(Opens in a new window) or WirelessKeyView (Opens in a new window)that can help you do the same thing.)
On macOS, open up the Spotlight search (Cmd+Space) and type Terminal to get the Mac equivalent of a command prompt. Type the following, replacing the Xs with the network name.
security find-generic-password -wa XXXXX
Techno star 