I stumbled upon the solution the other day whilst trying to solve another problem. If you take a look at this webpage that is on the Symantec Juice website (click here). If you use the file attached at the bottom of the post called WLAN.exe, it will allow you to export an existing WLAN profile saved on your laptop into an XML file. What you can do then do is create a script to import the XML file using the WLAN.exe utility to create the WLAN profile. What I have done is use Altiris to run this script on all client computers, as this process made it very simple to deploy. The script can be found at the end of this blog.

Firstly, you will need to have the WLAN profile already created on your computer. In my case I set-up a test WLAN environment with an SSID of “Test-Wireless” along with a WPA key of “@test-w1rele55!”. Once this was saved, I could use the utility to export the Test-Wireless profile to the XML file (you only need to do this once as long as the settings do not change!). But first, you need to do the following:

You need to find the GUID of your WIFI card, which you can find out by using the WLAN.exe tool and issuing the following command:
WLAN.exe ei
There are 1 interfaces in the system.
Interface 0:
GUID: 4ccd4bf2-4876-4993-a3de-3ed1cdf54eeb
Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection - Packet Scheduler Mini
port
State: "connected"
Command "ei" completed successfully.

You then need to export the WLAN profile for your chosen WLAN network (in this case “Test-Wireless). In the below example you need to pass WLAN.exe your GUID of your WIFI card:

WLAN.exe gp 4CCD4BF2-4876-4993-A3DE-3ED1CDF54EEB Test-Wireless

This then produces the following ouput in the command prompt window:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<WLANProfile xmlns="http://www.microsoft.com/networking/WLAN/profile/v1">
<name>Test-Wireless</name>
<SSIDConfig>
<SSID>
<hex>4A4E422D576972656C657373</hex>
<name>Test-Wireless</name>
</SSID>
</SSIDConfig>
<connectionType>ESS</connectionType>
<MSM>
<security>
<authEncryption>
<authentication>WPA2PSK</authentication>
<encryption>TKIP</encryption>
<useOneX>false</useOneX>
</authEncryption>
<sharedKey>
<keyType>networkKey</keyType>
<protected>false</protected>
<keyMaterial>12754EB0C3B25D3F9268E1C49C1E09E5FAD4F9930A67CEB8E3BC944A68047D67</keyMaterial>
</sharedKey>
</security>
</MSM>
</WLANProfile>

If you copy and paste the text into Notepad, you will be able to save it as an XML file (call it testwireless.xml).

Now that you have captured your WLAN profile, you are ready to think about deploying the profile. To deploy, test it on your computer. Delete the Test-Wireless network in your WLAN network list, and then issue the following command:

WLAN.exe sp 4CCD4BF2-4876-4993-A3DE-3ED1CDF54EEB testwireless.xml

If you check your list of Wireless Networks, you should find that Test-Wireless should be there along with the WPA key already entered!

That is the manual way of doing it, if you need to automate this amongst a different number of computers you face a problem in that for each computer that requires the WLAN profile, the WIFI GUID will be different on each machine! This did cause me some problems, but after messing with PowerShell for a few hours I managed to create a very simple script that will find the GUID of the machine that you want to deploy the profile to and then pass the GUID to the command line. Here is the PowerShell script to automate this:

$path = "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\WZCSVC\Parameters\Interfaces\"
$guid = Get-ChildItem -name $path
$guid = $guid.TrimStart("{")
$guid = $guid.TrimEnd("}")
.\WLAN.exe sp $guid testwireless.xml

And there you have an automated way of deploying a WLAN profile. This will prove to be a great time saver for our IT department & I hope someone will find this useful!

In my example, I have two forms called “Form1″ and “Form2″. There is a combobox & button on Form1 and a textbox on Form2. To pass the text entered into the combobox on Form1 into the textbox on Form2, all you have to do is this:

In the code of Form1, near the top should be:
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
}

After this enter:
public string combo1value
{
get
{
return (comboBox1.Text);
}
}

You then need to add a click event for the button on Form1 so that it shows Form2 & passes the text value of comboBox1. Double clicking on the button in the design view will automatically add the button click event for you.

Add the following lines into the button click event:
private void button3_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Form2 f2 = new Form2();
f2.frm1 = this;
f2.ShowDialog();
}

In Form2, view the code and enter the following underneath the InitializeComponent:
public Form2()
{
InitializeComponent();
}
public Form1 frm1;

What I did was to load the text value straight into the textbox on Form2 as soon as the form is loaded, so you can enter this (if you wish) under the FormLoad method like I have:
private void Form2_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
textbox1.text = frm1.combo1value;
}

So, if you enter some text into the comboBox on Form1 and then click the button on Form1, the text should appear in the textbox on Form2.

Also don’t forget to set in the design properties of the comboBox to set the “Modifiers” field to public. This then makes the comboBox public! (See attached image).

ComboBox Properties

So if you want to do this with a Cisco PIX, then it can be done easily via the command line (as an example, I will use the Google Earth app as the external hosts are well documented):

Step 1: Create a new object group:
object-group network GoogleEarth

Step 2: Add a description onto the object group:
description Google Earth Hosts

Step 3: Create a network object for each destination IP that your application needs to go direct:
network-object 64.233.183.190 255.255.255.255
network-object 64.233.183.93 255.255.255.255
network-object 64.233.183.91 255.255.255.255
network-object 64.233.183.136 255.255.255.255
network-object 65.87.18.132 255.255.255.255
network-object 65.87.18.134 255.255.255.255

Step 4: Create an ACL so that the PIX knows what to do when the object is fired:
access-list inside_access_in remark Unrestricted outbound access to Google Earth
access-list inside_access_in permit tcp any object-group GoogleEarth

Step 5: Create pdm’s for each IP Address listed in Step 3, whilst stating what Interface the IP is on:
pdm location 64.233.183.190 255.255.255.255 outside
pdm location 64.233.183.93 255.255.255.255 outside
pdm location 64.233.183.91 255.255.255.255 outside
pdm location 64.233.183.136 255.255.255.255 outside
pdm location 65.87.18.132 255.255.255.255 outside
pdm location 65.87.18.134 255.255.255.255 outside
pdm group GoogleEarth outside

Don’t forget that if you use a proxy.pac, to set the following Google Earth external hosts to go direct:

http://kh.google.com/

http://geo.keyhole.com/

http://auth.keyhole.com/

There isn’t much documentation on configuring the Cisco PIX, so I hope this helps someone!