Connecting to older wireless APs - this may help...

This is probably teaching people to suck eggs, but may help clear things up for some readers...

I was unable to connect to an older (backup) AP in Win10, but Win7 and my phone, tablet etc could connect no problem - these were connecting using WPA-TKIP, but MS now only allows WPA2-AES

So MS have removed the less secure WPA-TKIP protocol from W10 (this apparently started in W8), but they have left the even less secure WEP protocol in place!!!

I have now connected using WEP - on my router you can use a passphrase to create the hex pairs for the key, but you need to enter the actual hex characters as the key (eg 13 hex digit pairs = 26 characters to enter)

Looking at the wlan profile from the command line interface shows what the settings are...
netsh wlan>show profile plusnet2
Profile PlusNet2 on interface Wireless Network Connection 4:
====================================
Applied: All User Profile
Profile information
-------------------
Version : 1
Type : Wireless LAN
Name : PlusNet2
Control options :
Connection mode : Connect automatically
Network broadcast : Connect only if this network is broadcasting
AutoSwitch : Do not switch to other networks
MAC Randomization : Disabled
Connectivity settings
---------------------
Number of SSIDs : 1
SSID name : "PlusNet2"
Network type : Infrastructure
Radio type : [ Any Radio Type ]
Vendor extension : Not present
Security settings
-----------------
Authentication : Open
Cipher : WEP
Security key : Present
Key Index : 1

Looks like MS haven't completely removed WPA-TKIP: when the setting was set to WPA-TKIP the AP connected fine (the log on the Router shows that it has accepted the login passphrase credentials), but the state of the connection showed as State: Associating so it looks like W10 connects but does not complete the process

C:>netsh wlan show all
There is 1 interface on the system:
Name : Wireless Network Connection 4
Description : Qualcomm Atheros AR9485WB-EG Wireless Network Adapter
GUID : ee999a43-d489-495c-98ee-a673e36473e4
Physical address : 9c:b7:0d:1a:52:6e
State : associating
Radio status : Hardware On
Software On

OK, this is exactly the problem I have. I just don't understand how to fix it?

My new work PC connects fine to the work wireless, but at home, it cannot connect to the wireless AP that every other device in the home can use without an issue.

dashbois said:

OK, this is exactly the problem I have. I just don't understand how to fix it?

My new work PC connects fine to the work wireless, but at home, it cannot connect to the wireless AP that every other device in the home can use without an issue.

Hi dashbois - frustrating innit ....
From my research I reckon the issue is probably (possibly) only present with older APs which only support WPA-TKIP, which I understand was removed from Win8 and is not present in Win10.

• What are you using as your home AP?
• Is your AP currently set up using WPA as the connection protocol?
• Does it have the option to use WPA2-AES? If so change the connection type on the AP: your Win10 PC should then be able to connect to it, but you'll have to re-connect your other devices as they'll have to re-negotiate their connection/passcodes.
• If your AP doesn't have the option to select WPA2-AES, you can try using the less secure WEP protocol which Win10 still supports. This uses a string of hexadecimal characters as the passcode - so a 128-bit wep key would use a 13 character hex string (26 characters), something like "61446741743258293f77616b69". Again you'd have to set up your other devices to use the same string as their passcode.

Hope this helps.....

Yep, I switch the AP over the WPA based on my interpretation of the earlier post and it worked a dream. but you're right, everyone else had to reconnect. It wasn't a big deal, although a few tried to make it so. So all good - was just very frustrating that Windows didn't tell me that the reason I couldn't connect was because of WEP.

Oh well. I know now.

Thanks for your help.

Ztruker said:

I wonder if this is the cause of many of the "can't connect to wireless" problems people are seeing when upgrading from Win 7?

I'm dead certain it is for Win7 upgrades, since those upgrading from Win8.x wouldn't have the issue (or would have had it some time ago when they initially got Win8.x)

It only became a problem for me where I was using an old AP as a wireless extender upstairs: my primary AP downstairs had no connection problems as it had the up-to-date prototcols.

MS very lame excuse for removing WPA-TKIP was that WPA was insecure, so they replaced it in Win8.x with WPA2 ... so if it was so insecure why on earth did they leave the even less secure WEP connection present.

Reading between the lines I reckon they realised that their implementation of WPA had their own security issues (as well as the protocol itself being insecure), so removed it rather than fixing it