Windows Laptop as WiFi Hot-Spot

15 minute read

You all must have been in such a situation where you are were given internet access on a single device whereas you needed it for multiple devices. These situations are generally encountered in Schools or hotel rooms.

A solution would be to carry around your own portable 3G/4G routers, which would be a 3G/4G receiver and would act as a WiFi transmitter, but what if you forgot to carry that with you.

That’s when a Windows laptop or one of those fancy Windows desktops with WiFi PCI card would definitely come in handy. We will use the following steps to turn a Windows laptop into a WiFi Hotspot. In this guide, I will be providing screenshots from a windows 8 PC, but the windows 7 alternatives are not too different

Create WiFi Hot-Spot

If on windows 8, Right-click in the bottom left of your screen and select Command Prompt (Admin) to launch an administrative command prompt

cmd on win 8

If on windows 7, click the start button, type in cmd, right click on cmd.exe in the result and run as administrator

cmd on win 7

At first, we need to set up the wireless network, which is done using the netsh command :

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid="LyfGeek-WiFi" key="MyPa$$w0rD"

In the above command, ssid would be the name of the WiFi network and key would be the password. It’s also worth mentioning that the access point is created with WPA2-PSK (AES) encryption. (P.S. WiFi networks with this encryption might or might not work if your receiving device is old or doesn’t support AES enabled networks)

Now broadcast the created WiFi network using the below command:

netsh wlan start hostednetwork

Sharing Center Options

Now head over to the network connection window in the control panel. The window can be reached in 2 ways.

Press the +R key combination and type the following and click OK

ncpa.cpl

Or Right Click on the network icon in the tray and Open Network and Sharing Center

Click on Change Adapter Settings on the left and you arrive at the Network Connection Window.

Here you might find many network connections, from which you have to find out the main internet source and the hotspot which you just created.

To find it easily, first list the icons in details mode. Right Click View Details

Then check three columns Status, Device Name and Connectivity

  • The Status column of the host-spot would give us the ssid that we just created, the device name would be Microsoft Hosted Network Virtual Adapter and connectivity would be No Internet Access. Let’s Right click, rename that to My HotSpot.

  • The status column of our Internet source would be either Network Cable Plugged or WIFI, the device name would be something like PCIe GB Ethernet Controller or Intel Centrino Advanced 6200 AGN and the connectivity would be Internet Access.

Now right click on your internet source, click on properties and then the sharing tab. Here allow other devices to use your machines internet by selecting the first check-box, select My Hotspot from the drop-down and then uncheck the second before clicking on the OK button.

That’s it. Your WiFi hot-spot is ready. Cool, huh!!

Hot-Spot Info and Control

The below command can be used to have a tad bit more information on the WiFi network

netsh wlan show hostednetwork

No Devices connected to the Hot-Spot

One Device authenticated and connected to the hot-spot and sharing the internet connection

And in case you wanted to stop the hotspot and make it invisible to other devices, type the below command

netsh wlan stop hostednetwork

Please hit me on in case you face any issues and Comment/Share if the tutorial helped.

Enjoy!!

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