Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Delete a wireless profile in Windows 8

Sometimes you're in the need to manually delete a wireless network profile, for example when your settings have changed and you can no longer connect to the wireless network.

Apparently, Windows 8 has removed this functionality from the GUI.

You have the following options left:


  • NETSH command


C:\Users\levente.rog> netsh wlan delete profile name="Chihuahua"
Profile "Chihuahua" is deleted from interface "Wi-Fi".

As a side-note, it's worth exploring the other options of netsh wlan.


  • 3rd Party Tool
WiFi Profile Manager 8 is a nice little tool written by Lee Whittington. Nice GUI, lightweight and easy to use. Get the tool from here.



  • Registry

Find the profile under the following registry path and delete the key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList\Profiles


  • Windows Explorer

Navigate to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Wlansvc\Profiles\Interfaces to find and delete your profile (it's an xml file).



The hack explorer.exe shell:::{1fa9085f-25a2-489b-85d4-86326eedcd87} no longer seems to work, at least with build 6.2.9200.

5 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  2. Hey guys I read about how to delete saved wifi profiles in Windows 8 in a much easier and clear way right here http://goo.gl/5MHyaz

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  4. This is a great set of instructions. Although I'd like to know why you would use either the registry OR Windows Explorer, and not both... Wouldn't removing files from Windows Explorer still keep things in the registry? And removing things from the registry doesn't touch Windows Explorer.... unless there's some system process at work here.

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