How to Turn Your XP Laptop into a Mobile Wi-Fi Hotspot

Written by: Lamar Stonecypher Edited by: Rebecca Scudder Updated Dec 31, 2008 Related Guides: Ethernet| Windows XP Need to share your wireless or Ethernet connection with your colleagues? If they have Wi-Fi, its not difficult to set up a simple wireless network in Windows XP. Step-by-step we will show you how. From time to time its useful to be able to share an Internet connection on a temporary basis. If your laptop has Windows XP and Wi-Fi, its not difficult to share a wireless connection or an Ethernet connection. By wireless we mean a built-internal WLAN or external modem connection to your data network provider. Note that these are steps involved for Windows XP. Please go to this article if youre using Windows Vista. To start setting up your mobile hotspot, click on Start and go to the Control Panel. Double-click Network Connections.

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Right-click your wireless connection and chose Properties.

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In the Wireless Network Connections Properties dialog, click the box that says, Use Windows to configure my wireless network settings.

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At the bottom of the dialog window, click the Add button to start creating your mobile hotspot.

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Enter a name for your network, select Open under Network Authentication. Then, under Data Encryption, select WEP. Then enter desired password under Network key and confirm it in the next field. If you are unable to enter a password, un-check The key is provided for me automatically and the password key fields should open. Then check This is a computer-to-computer (ad-hoc) network; wireless access points are not used. Then click OK to create your hotspot. WEP stands for Wired Equivalent Privacy. It is not strong encryption, and it is easily defeated. Why do we suggest it? Because it works with a wide variety of devices - older laptops and handhelds - and because it can use a five-character password. The password may be referred to as 40-bit ASCII on some devices. (Palm OS devices will want to want to know that.) Note also that ad-hoc networks are intended to be networks of convenience, or temporary. If you have a more permanent need to share an Internet connection, it would be better to purchase a Wi-Fi router. Your new network will now appear under Preferred Networks.

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Click the Advanced button to bring up the Advanced properties dialog. Then click Computer-to-computer (adhoc) networks only."

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Click Close to close the Advanced properties dialog, and then OK to close the Network Connections Property Dialog. At this point, Windows XP is ready to start the network and make connections available to other devices. However, since we want to share the Internet connection from our wireless modem or our Ethernet connection, we need to now tell Windows which connection to share. If setting up a wireless to Wi-Fi connection, start by opening Networks Connections if it is not still open on your desktop. Then right-click the wireless connection that you wish to share. On the notebook were using for screen shots, its labeled National Access/Broadband Access. This will bring up the Properties dialog for the wireless modem.

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Click the Advanced tab and check Allow other network users to connect through the computers Internet connection.

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Setting up your mobile hotspot is now complete. The steps to share the wired connection instead of the wireless connection are exactly the same. Right-click your Ethernet connection in Network Connections, select Properties, click the Advanced tab, and check Allow other network users to connect through the computers Internet connection. Note that Windows will only allow one connection shared at a time. When you enable Internet connection sharing on one, Windows disables sharing on the other.

Lets try out the hotspot. If connecting wirelessly, start up your wireless connection if not connected now. (Windows may have asked you to re-start the connection during the above steps. Thats fine.) If sharing your Ethernet connection, please hook up if disconnected. In either case, click Start, then Connect To, and then Wireless Network Connection. If this is the first run, it may spend some time looking for the network. It will be saving settings for the network that it finds, so subsequent starts will be much faster. Then it will display this dialog.

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Select your own network and click Connect. Next, it will ask you to log in to the network.

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The dialog will then tell you that you are connected to a security-enabled computer-to-computer network. It will say Disconnected in the top-right corner until other parties connect. It will then stay connected until no other party is connected.

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Your friends and colleagues should now be able to go to their Network Sharing Center and find your new network listed under Connect to a Network. Tell them the password and they'll be able to connect. Heres our desktop PC showing the notebooks hotspot (Satilla) in the list of available networks.

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And here's what it looks like after connecting to the network.

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