How to Delete Wireless Profiles in Windows 8
Missing in Windows 8 is the ability to view and delete all wireless profiles from your PC. For some unknown reason Microsoft removed that feature which is very problematic if you ever need to edit a saved profile or delete one.
I recently had an issue with a wireless access point that had a hidden SSID. I had to manually setup the connection but I forgot to check the box to connect even if the network is not broadcasting. So I was able to connect the first time but all other attempts failed because the network would not show up on the new wireless charm list. When I would try to re-add the profile again using the manually create wireless screen it would fail because there was another wireless profile with the exact same name. Since Microsoft tore out the GUI t delete and edit profiles, I was stuck.
After some research I found that there is a command line utility that will let you delete profiles. To use that follow these steps:
- Open up an administrative level command prompt.
- Run the following commands to view all saved wireless profiles on your machine: netsh wlan show profile
- Note the profile name that you want to delete and run the following command: netsh wlan delete profile “profile name in quotes”
That is it, your profile will be instantly deleted. Now that was not very difficult but it a horrible user experience attempting to do something so simple.