Start WLAN AutoConfig (WLANSVC Service) On Windows 10 & Windows 11

Do you experience frequent problems with your Windows 11 laptop detecting wireless connections? If your answer is yes, I recommend you check the status of the WLAN AutoConfig service.

WLAN AutoConfig service ( WLANSVC ) helps Windows computers discover a wireless network (802.11 standards) and connect to it.

The duty of this service is the same function as Wireless Zero Configuration(WZC) in Windows XP.

In my personal experience, we can fix most wireless connectivity issues by starting the WLAN AutoConfig service instead of vendor wireless utilities on a computer.

Windows 11, 10, and Vista devices use the WLANSVC service to manage wireless networks, and you can find it on the services window under the display name WLAN Autoconfig.

Sometimes WLAN AutoConfig does not start automatically for some strange reasons. It creates issues with detecting WiFi networks.

The quick solution is to restart this service.

So we may need to go to the service page and starts this service manually. This tutorial tells how to run it on a computer in different ways.

1. Start WLANSVC service from the Services page
   
   
2. Start WLANSVC service from the Command Prompt

Let us check how to fix the problem if Windows could not start the WLAN AutoConfig Service automatically.

1. Type services.msc on Search.
   
   
2. Click Services when shown in Search.
   
   
   
   
3. Right-Click on the WLAN AutoConfig from the list of services listed. You may check the bottom of the list for it.
   
   
   
   
4. Click Start to run WLAN AutoConfig(WLANSVC Service)
   
   
   

Once you start WLAN AutoConfig(WLANSVC Service) on your computer, it will begin to discover available WiFi networks in your area.

You have learned how to run the wlansvc service from the services window. There is one more method to do it apart from the GUI method.

There is a DOS command to activate this service. However, we must have the administrative right to run this command because the DOS prompt must run as administrator.

Here we try the command prompt method to run it on a Windows computer (Vista and above) for a particular wireless interface.

1. Start Command Prompt as Administrator
   
   
   • Type cmd on Windows Search.
     
     
     
     
   • Right Click the Command Prompt, and click the option Run as Administrator.
   
   
   
2. Type netsh and press the Enter key.
   
   
3. Type wlan and press the Enter key.
   
   
4. Start Wlansvc for a Wireless interface
   
   It is the DOS Prompt command to start Wireless service on your Windows 11, 10, and Vista computer.
   
   set autoconfig enabled=yes interface="Name of Wireless Network Connection"
   
   You must specify the name of the wireless connection as the interface. Here on the image, I typed the name of WiFi network corenetworkz.
   
   
   
   
5. Press enter after entering the command prompt command to start WLAN AutoConfig on your computer to finish the process.

To read more about the Command Prompt commands to activate WLAN AutoConfig, visit the link below.

Here you will see how to remove or modify wireless filters on Windows 8 and 7 using DOS Prompt commands.





After compiling this tutorial, I have received inquiries from readers asking what happened to the Wireless Zero Configuration (WZC) service in newer versions of Windows Operating Systems.

We no longer see WZC on windows 8, Windows 7, and Vista computers because the WLAN AutoConfig service displaced WZC. So if you are looking for steps to find and start WZC (Wireless Zero Config) on Windows 7 and  8 computers, you must look for WLAN AutoConfig instead.

If you are not using Windows 7 or Windows 8 but running  XP on your computer, visit the link below to learn how to find and start WZC.