Skip to main content

Fatal error was starting Putty after having saved settings

Fix the frustrating PuTTY 'No supported authentication methods available' fatal error after saving settings. Learn the quick solution by deleting a specific PuTTY registry entry.

· 2 min read
View raw
Christophe
Markdown, WSL and Docker lover ~ Insatiable curious.
Cet article existe aussi en français — lire la version française.

This article is over a year old but was reviewed on July 30, 2026 — the content is still accurate.

Fatal error was starting Putty after having saved settings

⚡
TL;DR

This article fixes PuTTY's "No supported authentication methods available" fatal error that can appear after saving default settings: delete the Default%20Settings entry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\SimonTatham\PuTTY\Sessions in the Windows registry to reset PuTTY's defaults.

A few days ago, I updated my Putty configuration to set the default font-size to 12; no more 10.

Today, when starting Putty — whichever server I wanted to connect to — I got the No supported authentication methods available error, followed, in my case, by (server sent: publickey, gssapi-keyex, gssapi-with-mic, keyboard-interactive).

I only understood the origin of the problem by looking at the window caption: Putty was trying to connect to a server other than the one I wanted. Why? And, ah, ok, the last time I modified my settings I was working on that server so, the solution should come from: how can I reset my Putty settings?

The solution has been provided by @makurison on https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57072011/delete-putty-default-settings-modification-to-original.

Simply start regedit.exe, search for the key Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\SimonTatham\PuTTY\Sessions and, there, remove the entry called Default%20Settings.

While you're at it: KeePass - Overriding the URL field shows how to launch a PuTTY session straight from a KeePass entry, credentials included — and Windows Terminal - Adding a SSH profile does the same without PuTTY at all.

Tired of session/password hassles with Putty?

If you're also fighting with a forgotten stored password, see WinSCP - Retrieve a stored password. Or better, switch to key-based authentication once and for all: SSH - Launch a terminal on your session without having to authenticate yourself.


Was this article helpful?
Did you try the steps in this article?