How do I stop a Blackberry Playbook from losing WiFi settings?

I have had a 64 GB Blackberry Playbook for several years. I bought it to hold a number of films, books and music for when I was going into hospital for several weeks.

After that, I did not use it for several weeks, and when I started using it again it would no longer remember the details of WiFi networks when it was turned off, and I had to key in the pass phrase each time I turned it on if I wanted to use the network. I also noticed that the sequence of colours while it was starting up went on for longer. Originally is finished with a plum red sequence just before the desktop appeared, but it went on beyond the red colours into a sequence of blues before the desktop appeared. Eventually I did a security wipe, and since then it has remembered network details perfectly.

Anyway, the son of some friends of ours has the same model of Playbook, and it has started forgetting WiFi settings, although it still goes to the desktop from the plum red colour sequence.

Why do Playbooks experience amnesia with respect to WiFi settings, and is there a way of recovering from this without a security wipe? The young man has a number of partially completed games on his Playbook that he does not want to lose by performing a wipe.