Am i wasting my time?
#1
Hello wondering if somebody can help with my situation.
I captured the handshake of my network and converted it straight to hccapx using this site without cleaning the cap file, just wondering if i am still able to crack the hccap or do you HAVE to clean the cap before converting to hccapx as i've been running hashcat for 2 days now on the hccapx. 
Would be really grateful if somebody could answer this for me, thanks.
#2
You don't have to clean your cap and in fact it's not even recommended. Since it's your network and you know the passphrase you can simply put it into your wordlist for an easy and quick test.
#3
Thanks for the clarification, it's not a word list i was trying to brute force it with a set of rules.

Thanks.
#4
IF you want to test a brute force/mask approach on a known password, then if your password was 'Password1' you could set your mask to 'Password?d' so that there are only 10 possible passwords to try. It will at least confirm if Hashcat cracks it successfully.