Phone forgetting networks after turning off wifi

Question

Whenever adding a new wireless network, android seems to forget the network after disabling then re-enabling wifi. I am forced to manually connect to the network and enter the password each time. This also happens with open networks. The problem occurs on any wireless network, at home, work, public networks, etc.

Further inspection on the /data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf file shows "disabled=1" added to the end of each network.

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This has been going on for weeks. Any help would be much appreciated.

Phone: Nexus 4 Version: 4.4.4

Answer 1

I have had this problem for almost a year now. I have Nexus 5 and all the latest Android OSs. I had the exact problem, and it was really annoying. Whenever I turn of wifi or phone, it keeps forgetting my home wifi and all newly added...

Solution:

1. Settings > Wifi > Saved Networks

The list showed over 120 remembered networks.... I travel a lot, and it was mostly hotels, bars etc. So i didn't need them and I have deleted over 100 networks.

2. Problem was still there. When i turn off wifi again - the same.

I repeated the step 1. There was again list of over 100 saved networks(different ones)...

3. Repeat step 1 over 5 times!!!

4. Now I have only 20 saved networks. And when I add new network - the device remembers it!!!

I guess that the problem was - when you remember new network - it is there in your phone. When you turn off wifi and back on - it tries to overwrite it on your google backup account ...

However - I am happy again! This was really annoying.

Cheers Marko

Answer 2

I noticed a similar problem on Dell tablet where it would ask for the wifi password and connect, but forget it every time.

I would have tried checking the wifi system files, but it wasn't rooted, I ended up solving the problem with this tutorial.

The short version for those with adb installed, is:

1) adb backup -apk -shared -all -f ~/mybackup.ab (or wherever you want to save the file). Make sure developer mode and debugging is enabled in tablet settings.

2) Make sure the backup was created, should be about the size of used space on the device. Now do the factory-reset in settings.

3) After doing the initial-setup procedure on tablet, make sure developer mode and debugging is enabled in tablet settings, then on the computer run adb restore ~/mybackup.ab (or wherever you saved your backup)