Can't paste wireless encryption keys?!

[Dave Beauvais]

This weekend I replaced my old router and separate access point with a Linksys WRT54GL running DD-WRT (http://www.dd-wrt.com/) firmware. My previous access point was an old Linksys WAP11 and was never able to support WPA security. The new router supports this and I was anxious to make use of it.

I generated a ridiculously complex sixty-three character random passphrase using Steve Gibson's password generator (https://www.grc.com/password) and set it up on my laptop. Using a simple copy and paste, this worked flawlessly and I was connected in seconds. Obviously something like that is unpleasant to type on a PC, and is worse on a Pocket PC, so I saved the string into my FlexWallet file, synced with my hx4700 (which has been "upgraded" to WM5), copied the string... and was highly irritated to find that I was unable to paste it into the passphrase box in the wireless network profile dialog.

Of all places do disable pasting, what genius at Microsoft decided the security key field would be a good one to cripple? In most cases, WEP keys are long random hex strings and WPA passphrases can be up to sixty-three characters long and could contain any printable ASCII character -- including at least one which I was unable to enter using any input method on the Pocket PC. It doesn't help that the input is masked by asterisks, making detecting typos impossible.

I ended up getting around this by using my own shorter passphrase instead of a randomly generated one, but this has got to be one of the more user-hostile aspects of Windows Mobile. Is this something unique to upgrade hx4700s or is this true of all WM5 devices? (I could swear I was able to paste my WEP key under WM2003 SE.)

[Sven Johannsen]

Is this something unique to upgrade hx4700s or is this true of all WM5 devices? (I could swear I was able to paste my WEP key under WM2003 SE.)
Yes, and you were. :evil: I even used to recommend this as a relatively foolproof way of getting the key into the box previously. It's so easy to mess up.

[gertva]

What a mess... Security is one thing. A user-friendly way of working is another. I often "loose" the key and I need to re-enter in manualy. It takes me a lot of time. Does anyone know a way to bypass it? A software utility? All help is welcome...

[Menneisyys]

Unfortunately, one of WM5's biggest letdowns is the lack of secuity key fields' "pasteability".

To my knownedleg, nothing can be done to this problem. MS is, however, aware of the problem (I've brought up this question several times) and, hopefully, there'll be changes.

[gertva]

Dear Werner, thank you for your answer. It is a pitty though: I travel a lot between offices and my pocket PC is as good as useless thanks to this: each time I now (re-)enter an office I have the risk the pocket pc forgot the key. One of the strange things I noticed is that even when I want to connect to the same network as the day before, my handheld thinks the key is automatically provided, which isn't the case, of course. I loose a lot of time re-entering all the different keys because I can also not show the key on the screen that I need to copy it from. So I have to write the key on a piece of paper, enter it in the handheld, and eat the piece of paper afterwards for security reasons. The sooner MS solves this problem, the happier I will be. Thank you for pushing them.

gert