The support for WPA/TKIP was deliberatedly removed from win8.1 because it's being dropped from the standard, too:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/290c63b4-ce04-4483-a047-e1000c7d7699/wpa-security-types-are-missing-after-upgrading-to-windows-81 :
We removed the WPA option in Windows 8.1 for two reasons:
- WPA is less secure than WPA2. Most devices support WPA2, so there's
little reason to use the less-secure encryption of WPA.
- The Wi-Fi
Alliance international standards organization released a new 2.0
version of the WSC protocol. Version 2.0 removes support for WPA, so
new 2.0-compliant devices may not be able to support WPA. It would be
misleading if Windows showed the option when the option would probably
just fail on 2.0 devices anyway.
That is more than a justification to reconfigure your access point to use WPA2:
- If newer devices will not support WPA, you're going to need to do that anyway.
- Since WPA1-only devices are nigh-nonexistent at this point in time, you're not losing anything by doing that.
In the remote case you do have any WPA1-only devices, an AP may be able to work in hybrid WPA/WPA2 mode (this can degrade its performance and/or stability, so use it only if you must).
If you're in a corporate environment, this is also a justification why you being unable to connect is their, not your, problem: "Microsoft has officially dropped support. So either reconfigure the AP, or install an earlier version of Windows onto my corporate notebook (if it's corporate), or include a requirement of an earlier version of Windows for personal machines used for work into corporate regulations since WPA is no longer a standard that you can expect everyone to be able to conform to with reasonable effort (if it's personal)."
If the network advertises its security type correctly, there should be no need for any trickery. What exactly doesn't work for you and how does this problem manifest? – Daniel B – 2015-08-22T23:04:08.967
@DanielB they're trying to manually set up a wireless profile, which means the security type needs to be selected manually – TheWanderer – 2015-08-22T23:11:03.987
@Zacharee1 I get that. What I don’t get is why. – Daniel B – 2015-08-23T11:30:09.563
@DanielB It's probably because the WiFi network isn't nearby. – TheWanderer – 2015-08-23T13:58:24.460
What do you mean you don't get why? Windows 8.1 does not support WPA networks via the GUI and requires the use of netsh and XML files. I'm asking how. – user9993 – 2015-08-23T14:23:47.840
Let me restate the question: Why do you need to connect manually? Are you out of range? Is setting it up on-site not acceptable? Is the SSID hidden? – Daniel B – 2015-08-24T08:42:24.917
Because Windows 8.1 does NOT support connecting to a WPA network via the GUI/control panel. It has to be done through netsh. I am in range. – user9993 – 2015-08-24T08:51:11.857
@DanielB Same problem here. The wifi network of our company uses self-signed certificates, so the connection must be set up manually in order to be able to disable the checkbox for "certificate validation". Anyway, what I don't know is why you insist in wondering "why?" Do this additional information change anything? – jap1968 – 2016-10-28T11:22:22.253