Gone are the days when we used to connect to an Internet connection using LAN or Local Area Network. Things have changed a lot and LAN has become outdated and we don’t need to be hooked with a wire at home. Now, we have turned to wireless connectivity. Just turn on Wi-Fi on your laptop or desktop computer and you’ll see a host of open and secure wireless networks listed. In this tutorial, we will see how we can manage wireless networks on Windows 10, view driver adapters, view saved network profiles, delete them and so on.
Now, there is more than one way to manage wireless networks on Windows 10. You can do that via Windows Settings and Control Panel. However, if you want to find the security keys of different Wi-Fi profiles to troubleshoot connectivity issues, you might need to use “Netsh” (Network Shell) commands using the command prompt.
Netsh WLAN commands can come in very handy if you want to configure and manage wireless networks on a Windows PC. You can view network settings information, diagnose issues and even fix them.
To launch the command prompt on Windows, you can use Win + X keys or right-click the Windows Start icon and select Windows PowerShell (Admin). If you want to swap the functions of the left and right mouse buttons, read our tutorial.
View Driver Information of Wireless Adapter
To get the driver information of your wireless adapter, use the following command:
Netsh WLAN show drivers
This command will tell information about the installed driver, vendor name, version, wireless display support and much more.
To view all the features supported by your wireless adapter, use the following command:
Netsh WLAN show wirelesscapabilities
View Settings of Wireless Adapter
If you want to see specific wireless adapter information such as wireless signal, radio type, channel and type of authentication your computer is using, you can use the following command:
Netsh WLAN show interfaces
The above command will display settings of all wireless adapter on your computer. If you want to see the settings for one specific wireless adapter, you can use the following command:
Netsh WLAN show interface name="Interface_Name"
View Wireless Network Profiles saved on your Computer
Whenever you connect your computer to a wireless network, the operating system creates a network profile and it gets automatically stored in your computer. If you want you can view all these network profiles using the following command:
Netsh WLAN show profiles
The above command shows all the wireless network profiles stored on your computer and you can connect to any of these wireless networks using these network profiles.
To see the list of profiles for a particular wireless adapter, you can use the following command:
Netsh WLAN show profiles interface="Wireless_Interface_Neme"
Delete Wireless Network Profiles stored on your Computer
When you no longer need to connect to a particular network profile because you have moved somewhere else or that wireless network is no longer available or you need to reset the network profile settings then you can delete that particular network profile. To delete any network profile, use the following command:
Netsh WLAN delete profile name="Profile_Name"
When you delete a wireless network profile using this command, write the name of the profile in place of “Profile_Name”.
Note: While Windows 10 is capable of syncing your wireless network profile between 2 computers if you use the same Microsoft account on both the computers, it won’t sync the changes you made to wireless network profiles.
Recover Network Security Key from any Wireless Network Profile
Using Netsh command, you can recover network security key from any wireless network profile stored on your computer. If you have lost or cannot remember the security key to connect another device to your wireless access point then you can use the following command to recover network security key for any network profile:
Netsh WLAN show profile name="Profile_Name" key=clear
Note: You can view your current network security key through the wireless adapter properties in the control panel.
Stop Connecting Automatically to a Wireless Network
We have many times seen that our laptops try to connect to a wireless network which is out of range. Using Netsh commands, we can stop the automatic connection process to those wireless networks which are out of range or those which offer poor connectivity. To stop connecting automatically to a wireless network, use the following command:
Netsh WLAN set profileparameter name="Profile_Name" connectionmode=manual
If you choose a network to connect automatically to your system when in range, windows 10 will set that network as a priority. If you want a network to move up in the list of priority networks, use the following command:
Netsh WLAN set profileparameter name=" Profile_Name" connectionmode=auto
Generate Wireless Adapter Report
It happens many times that you want to connect to a wireless network access point but you can’t and the worst is you don’t even know the reason for that. Here, Netsh command comes to rescue. If you need to troubleshoot why your system can’t connect to a wireless network access point, you can use the following command:
Netsh WLAN show WLANreport
This command will generate a troubleshoot report for the wireless adapter so that you can identify the reason for non-connectivity. The above command will generate the troubleshoot report in the following path:
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WLANReport\WLAN-report-latest.html
After the wireless adapter report has been created, open the report. The report will show a graph with connectivity status and many other pieces of information like when the connection started when it got disconnected and errors. It is a very detailed report which also summarizes information about network adapters configured on your computer, success and failure rate, disconnect reasons and many more.
Export Wireless Network Profiles
Up to Windows 7, Microsoft allowed importing and exporting of wireless network profiles through the control panel. But in windows 10, Microsoft removed this feature because of the sharing functionality and syncing of Microsoft accounts. However, users can still use this feature using Netsh commands.
To export all your wireless network profiles, use the following command:
Netsh WLAN export profile key=clear folder="Folder_Path"
To export only one wireless network profile, use the following command:
Netsh WLAN export profile name="Profile_Name" key=clear folder="Folder_Path"
In this command, you have to specify the name of the network profile you want to export in place of “Profile_Name”.
This was our guide to managing wireless networks in Windows 10 using the command prompt. To know other Netsh commands, type the following in command prompt and press Enter.
Netsh WLAN
If you know some other Netsh commands, share them with us in the comments section below. Also, you must not miss our tips on speeding up Windows 10 boot time if you want to enjoy a faster experience on your PC. Feel free to share this article with your followers on Facebook and Twitter.
