How to turn your Windows 7 or 8.1 laptop into a wireless hotspot
Channel: Gautam Patoa
Date: 09/07/2017

Share Internet connection from your Laptop to other mobile devices and other Laptops using Wifi as Hostspot.

Many people may ask why, in this age of affordable home internet connections and Wi-Fi everywhere, you would need to set up your laptop as a wireless hotspot. It could be for a variety of reasons such as you still having a wired Ethernet connection you want to share, or a laptop that has a powerful 4G connection via a dongle.

Command Line

For anyone who doesn't fancy downloading another program onto their already packed hard drive there's good news – you can set up a wireless router on your Windows 7 or 8.1 PC by using the command line.

You need to run an elevated command line to get to the correct page and this is easily done. First off press Windows+R at the same time to reveal the Run box. Here type in 'tskmgr' to open up the Task Manager. Navigate to File, then Run new task. In the text field type in 'cmd' and then check the box next to Create this task with administrative privileges.

When it opens, type in the following command:

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=MyNet key=MyPassword

Replace 'MyNet' with a name you want to use for the custom network, and 'MyPassword' with a password that is hard to guess. Press enter to create it and then type in the following text:

netsh wlan start hostednetwork

Press enter again to start it up.

Lastly, go to Control Panel - Network and Internet - Network and Sharing Centre - Change Adapter Settings, right click your internet connection and select Properties. Select the Sharing tab and then check 'Allow other network users to connect…' and pick the virtual Wi-Fi adapter name you just created.