Lost wireless keys

Hi... I changed the HD on my laptop, reinstalled XP, but now I've lost all my wifi passwords. Tried Cain, Password Reveal and WirelessKeyView, but no luck- WEP keys show as gibberish with WirelessKeyView, the rest show nothing. I've a hunch I need to synchronise/migrate my drives or something like that, but t would be much easier if there was simply a file to copy...

Any ideas?

 

Have you tried entering this gibberish? I've used WKV in the past, and it gave me a VERY long string of seemingly random letters and numbers. I copy-n-pasted them into notepad, then copied them from there into the spot where it asks for the key, and it worked. If it doesn't you may have to reset the routers to erase the WEP keys. All routers have a reset button on them somewhere, it usually requires a straightened paper clip to push it in. Hold it for 10 or 15 seconds. Reboot the PC. Unplug the power from the router and modem for maybe 30-60 seconds, then plug them back in; modem first, then the router. Wait a minute or two before trying to logon.

 

I was just thinkin'.... If you have another PC that's connected to the wireless network, run WKV on that PC, and do the ol' copy-n-paste into Notepad, save the file on a thumb drive, move to the PC that doesn't connect, and copy-n-paste the key from the thumb drive into WEP entry box, and Voila'! Be sure you try this BEFORE you press the reset button on the router. If you do end up using the reset button, remember that you'll (probably) need to reconfigure all the PC's using the wifi connection and remove the WEP keys from those particular computers...

 

1) If you put a new HDD and loaded Windows, there are no keys to recover.
2) If you reinstalled Windows and reformatted the HDD at install, there are no keys to recover.
3) If you put swapped the drive and copied or imaged the drive back, there may be keys to recover.
At least from the OS side, you can log into your router(s) and get them back.

 

Thanks for the ideas, folks, and sorry for not being specific enough. What I've done is upgraded my HDD. I installed the new drive and installed XP from a CD. (I know, I could have simply installed an image of my old drive, but I wanted a fresh, uncluttered install.) I took out the old drive and put it in a USB case, thinking I could just do a search to find any old passwords as needed. However, I didn't realise it was going to be so complicated.

When I couldn't simply locate the passwords in a file, I reinstalled the old drive and used WKV, Cain, etc, hoping to uncover them. When that didn't work, I started cursing myself for not originally writing them all down and emailing them to myself!

The passwords I want are for wifi routers that I have used in various places around the city and further afield. One or two I'm not really supposed to have, or, at least, if I ask for them again I'll be frowned upon (you know how system administrators can be! (apologies if you fall into this category- I completely understand why!). And of course I'll get in serious trouble if I go around resetting them all!

I'm quite surprised that this is so tricky. Since my hacking skills aren't up to this (and I really don't have the time to learn how), I guess I'm stuck with grovelling/bribing administrators for the pwds, or imaging my old drive.

Thanks anyway.

 

I believe there is software out there that will recover the WEP keys from the drive (as long as it hasn't been formatted or overwritten). This software isn't free, however. I don't remember what it's called, but I found it once when looking for something else. Some Googling should find it.
Good Luck!