Developers cannot create wireless client programs that manage wireless profiles and connections over the Wireless Zero Configuration service in Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2)

Developers cannot create wireless client programs to manage wireless profiles and connections over the Wireless Zero Configuration in Microsoft Windows XP. This problem occurs because APIs that are required to do this do not exist.

Update information

The following file is available for download from the Microsoft Download Center:

Download the Wireless LAN API package now. (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=52A43BAB-DC4E-413F-AC71-158EFD1ADA50)

Release Date: November 21, 2006

For more information about how to download Microsoft support files, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Microsoft scanned this file for viruses. Microsoft used the most current virus-detection software that was available on the date that the file was posted. The file is stored on security-enhanced servers that help prevent any unauthorized changes to the file.

Prerequisites

To apply this update, you must have Windows XP SP2 and Microsoft Core XML Services (MSXML) 6.0 installed.

Restart requirement

You must restart the computer after you apply this update.

Update replacement information

This update does not replace any other updates.

File information

The English version of this hotfix has the file attributes (or later file attributes) that are listed in the following table. The dates and times for these files are listed in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). When you view the file information, it is converted to local time. To find the difference between UTC and local time, use the Time Zone tab in the Date and Time item in Control Panel.
This set of APIs enables developers to create applications that can manage wireless LAN profiles and connectivity on Microsoft Windows XP SP2 building on the native wireless functionality in Windows that is called Wireless Zero Configuration service. The exposed connection and disconnection API elements can be used to override the automatic configuration and connection logic. This in turn will enable third-party wireless client applications to support usage scenarios that are not natively supported with Windows wireless functionality. These scenarios include providing seamless and automatic roaming between different wireless media types. For example, between Wireless LAN (WLAN) and Wireless WAN (WWAN). These scenarios also include automatic provisioning of wireless computers for public Wi-Fi hotspots usage. This API is a subset of the Wireless LAN APIs introduced in Windows Vista. These APIs are known as the Native Wi-Fi APIs. This means developers can write wireless client applications that work on Windows XP SP2 and on Windows Vista.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.

These APIs are documented in Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows Vista and also on MSDN. To see these APIs on MSDN, vist the following Web site: To download Windows Vista SDK, visit the following Web site: Note It is expected behavior that when the WPA2 update is uninstalled (that is, when the binaries other than Wlanpi.dll that are part of the WLAN API are uninstalled), the uninstall restores the Wireless Auto Configuration registry keys to their original state before the install. Therefore, the profiles that are created after the install are lost. This avoids inconsistencies that may result from a changed data structure, among other things, being incorrectly used by the old Wireless Auto Configuration. For example, consider the following scenario:

1. A user has profiles A and B.
2. The user installs the package.
3. The user adds profiles C and D.
4. Later, the user removes the packages.

In this scenario, profiles C and D are removed, and profiles A and B should remain.

For more information, visit the following Microsoft Web site: For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: