How To: fix GitCredentialWinStore missing

Historically GitExtensions' installer included the credential helper GitCredentialWinStore, and it set the git global configuration entry credential.helper to the path to its file git-credential-winstore.exe.

From GitExtensions 2.49 onwards, GitCredentialWinStore is no longer distributed in the GitExtensions installer and it no longer tries to set the git variable credential.helper. The current versions of git for Windows includes a credential helper for Windows called wincred. However, your git configuration may still contain that entry to use GitCredentialWinStore, a credential helper that's now missing from your computer.

If you update git, it doesn't change the setting. As far as git is concerned you have chosen to use that credential helper so it shouldn't change it. If you uninstall and reinstall git then it fixes the problem, as it removes your git configuration and recreates it.

You can remove the old setting with the following command:

git config --global --unset credential.helper

After this you will need to enter your username and password when pushing.

You can also switch to using git's wincred with the following command:

git config --global credential.helper wincred

or by making the following change in your .gitconfig file manually:

[credential]
    helper = wincred

Alternatively you could download the successor to GitCredentialWinStore called Git-Credential-Manager-for-Windows. You may still need to change the credential.helper setting with a command similar to that above, unless their installer does that for you.

You can read about credential helpers here: https://github.com/Microsoft/Git-Credential-Manager-for-Windows

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Related thread: https://github.com/gitextensions/gitextensions/issues/3511#issuecomment-313633897

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