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missing WLAN network in capture window

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Hello, a couple of months ago I had wireshark installed and captured my WLAN traffic. Now I reinstalled and in the Capture window there is only USBcap1 USBcap2 UDP Listener remote capture but no WLAN network. Any suggestions? Thanks Daniele

software Windows 10 Version 1703 wireshark Version 2.4.2

asked 13 Oct '17, 15:19

schallquant's gravatar image

schallquant
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accept rate: 0%

This is another permutation of the "no interfaces found" question which pops up frequently these days - it coincides with the emerge of Windows 10 but I'm not sure it is actually related.

The "interfaces" you can see (USBPcapX, UDP listener etc.) do not need a network packet capturing driver. WinPcap is the one which comes along with Wireshark, and NPcap is an alternative which hooks into the system using a different API in the network stack but is not bundled into Wireshark installer.

So try to uninstall and re-install WinPcap (you may download its individual installer so that you wouldn't need to uninstall and reinstall the whole Wireshark package) and make sure you have checked the choice which says something like "start at boot time to allow capturing to all users", as omitting that this is the most common reason why Wireshark cannot find any network interfaces.

(14 Oct '17, 01:55) sindy

Thanks. I reinstalled wireshark completely and this time I checked, start at boot time. This solved the problem. Former reinstalls with unchecked box did not change anything. Isn't this a bug? Why do they give the choice to start or not to start at boot time, if it only works with start at boot time? It does seem to work only on some machines without start at boot time, right?

(14 Oct '17, 02:47) schallquant

Nope, the difference between "some" and "other" machines seems to be the behaviour of the installer.

I've just uninstalled the development version of Wireshark and uninstalled WinPcap too, to re-confirm my belief that I always had that checbox pre-ticked. Next, I have installed the latest stable Wireshark release (2.4.2 as of writing this) and the WinPcap "start at boot time" checkmark was there.

Note that WinPcap is bundled to Windows installers of Wireshark as a complete package including its own installer and its default settings and that this package has not changed for years. So I can suspect that something inside it gets confused by something in Windows 10 environment or that the difference of the preset value of the "start at boot" option depends e.g. on the presence or absence of administrator privileges of the user performing the installation.

(14 Oct '17, 06:59) sindy

Why isn't it a bug, if the behaviour of the installer depends on the machine? The checkbox is pre-ticked, that's right. But the checkbox is there, letting the user believe that the software is able to work even without start at boot time. And why isn't it a bug, if winpcap gets confused by windows 10 environment or by presence or by absence of administrator privileges? How do you call it, if it is not a bug?

(14 Oct '17, 07:06) schallquant

If you ask several questions and get a single answer, it makes sense to check to which of the questions the answer fits best :-)

Usually it is the last one, like in this case. I should have quoted it before the answer.

It does seem to work only on some machines without start at boot time, right?

Regarding the question whether it is a bug or not, I'm not the one to judge. Wireshark developers are not responsible for WinPcap, and WinPcap hasn't changed for years because there was no need so the authors concentrate on more interesting projects. So even if it is a bug, I don't know where to report it.

(14 Oct '17, 07:40) sindy