Prioritizing and Deleting Preferred Wireless Networks

Prioritizing and Deleting Preferred Wireless Networks

You've brought your laptop home after a long trip. You turn it on, expecting to connect to your safe and secure wireless network and find instead that your computer is trying desperately to connect to the wireless network of the hotel you stayed in, now thousands of miles away.

If something like this has ever happened to you before, there is an answer: you can prioritize the wireless networks that your computer remembers.



To find your network connections, first left-click on the Start menu, go to Settings, and then click Control Panel. Double-click on Network Connections in the Control Panel menu.



This will display your network connections. Locate your Wireless Network Connection and right-click on it. Left-click on Properties.



This will open the Wireless Network Connection Properties Menu. Click on the Wireless Networks tab to view your preferred wireless networks.

This list of networks includes any wireless network you have connected to in the past. Sometimes, if two networks that you have connected to are present, Windows will connect to the network that is higher up on this list. Other times, it may not find any networks that it can connect to, and so it might search for the last network you used – which could be miles away.

This list can be prioritized and cleaned of old networks. If you see a wireless network that you won't use again or don't want in the list, click on it once and then press the Delete key on your keyboard. This will delete the network from this list. You can still reconnect to this network in the future – deleting it simply removes any preferences you had for connecting to that network.



Once you have deleted the networks you don't want, click once on the network that you want Windows to connect to first. Click the Move up button to move this network up on the list. Keep clicking until your most preferred network is at the top of the list. You can also use this function to set a second preference, a third preference, and so on.

That's it! Your computer should connect to the wireless networks you want more easily, especially when there is more than one that you connect to nearby.