Recover WPA key held by 3rd party software (RM)

I might not find many sympathetic ears (eyes?) around here for this one, but I will ask anyway...

In my favour, I think people will understand my motives: I'm a teacher in a school that has just had RM roll out Vista (what's the excuse for that?!) across all staff and student laptops and I would like very much to try and get a decent operating system on mine!

Obviously, it'll be useless to me if I can't get some sort of network connectivity (I appreciate the WPA key would only be the first hurdle).

I'm familiar with Nirsoft's WirelessKeyView that grabs keys from c:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Wlansvc\Profiles\Interfac es\ and that correctly identifies my home network's WPA key. However, it doesn't find the school one. Presumably because network connectivity is handled by some of RM's software. "My Connect", maybe?? (I've not worked in an RM school before)

Has anyone got any thoughts on where/how that key might be stored?

Cheers,
Tim

Contact your network administrator or get your person in your school who talks to RM to get the key. If this is legit, you'll be able to get the key via the correct channels without resorting to using software to get it.

On a side note, getting the key without the authorisation of your school may be breaking some of their policies and will for certain be breaking the law as you do not have their permission.

Also, installing a different OS on school property might get you into bad books with who ever looks after the kit. I know if any of my teachers installed a different os on their laptops, i'd take their laptop off them.

How authoritarian!

I saw that sort of response coming I suppose. I'm aware of the implications, thanks.

RM offered to charge a colleague 150 quid to get their macbook on the network. With a few key details, I'll happily cut those 'administration' costs. Oh, the joys of outsourcing IT eh!

If anyone could shed some light on whether or not it is this "My Connect" application handling the connectivity, that would also be of use.

Thanks,

Tim

Its not My Connect connectivity would be handled by vista. You should be aware that many of the Nirsoft's programs are often flagged by antivirus (well sophos anyway). You are just cruising to get the machine taken away by the sounds of it.

I'm not too worried about that. I have a reasonable relationship with the IT lads, so I'd get a polite request to stop tinkering long before anyone threatened to take my laptop away from me! (keeping in mind that we use exclusively IWBs these days and some of the rooms I teach in don't even have marker boards!)

I know they will have been asked not to disclose the key though (if it's even been shared with them), so I don't really want to put them in an awkward position by asking for it.

I'm only talking about freeing up some space and dual booting the machine, either through a seperate partition or a loopback filesystem a la Wubi. I don't want to destroy the thing!

Getting my EeePC on the network and helping all my colleagues who don't want to tote the 3kg behemoths we've been given would be an added bonus!

Anyway.. I should have known this topic was too taboo for this forum. I have been reading it sporadically for a long time!

Thanks,

Tim

@timothy: Ignoring the fact that what you are doing is wrong and may cause you to receive disciplinary action, I suspect that it is not a simple WPA key you require-more than likely, the wireless access is tied in with some other form of authentication.

You mention a £150 fee for your coleague's laptop to be configured. Much of this fee would have been to satisfy licensing requirements.

If you get on as well as you say with your IT Team, just go and have a chat... they will tell you exactly why it won't/can't be done.

I had wondered if that might be the case.

Ta for your thoughts. Will see what else I can find out.