Turning Windows 7 into a Wi-FI Access Point (for free!)

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So I’ve become extremely fond of my iPad. I think it’s the future form factor for ‘sofa surfing’ (that’s web surfing from your sofa while watching TV).   I just checked into my hotel here in Bellevue for the Microsoft Hosting Summit and wanted to get my iPad online. The problem only wired internet was included in the room rate and the ipad is only wifi.. what to do..  So I started searching for software to convert my laptop into a wifi bridge so I could connect to it to connect to my in room wired connection.  I did find: Connectify:  http://www.connectify.me

 

But it wasn’t working for my laptop (I run Windows 7 x64 and there seems to be some problems with the 64 bit version of Windows driver support).

 

Anyway, a great blog post from Steven Bink walked me through the basics: http://bink.nu/news/windows-7-as-an-wifi-accesspoint.aspx

 

I did run into a couple problems where I had to reset my wireless card to get it to work correctly and first time through I missed the command to actually turn on the hotspot (: netsh wlan start hostednetwork) but once I got that turned on. My ipad was able to ID it and I’m now able to relax away from the desk and still watch my emails.

 

Enjoy!

Published by Jess

Experienced as a Web Developer and Web Server administrator since 1994, in 1999 Jess set out to start a Web Hosting Provider that would leverage the latest in cutting edge and innovative technologies and make them available to businesses in a way that was easy to understand, easy to use and affordable. Today Applied Innovations is a recognized leader in Windows Hosting and specializes in ASP.NET, E-Commerce and Advanced Web Application Hosting.

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