Turn your Windows 7 laptop into a Wi-Fi Hotspot

Blog Story reader can keep reading if they dont get bored of my story telling strategies

Well I just bought an android phone, my friend and office colleague Zohaib Khalid sold me his Huawei IDEOS U8150 on installments, thank you once again dear friend. But this just started once again a AppUseAndDeveloo\p battle in me after I waited for almost an year on the Samsung B3410 dumb touch phone :(


Well, WAR i wrote cause these days, i m really low at spending ( will write abt it some time later in life when it gets more relevant :) ) and so i just was not able to spend on the expensive GPRS by zong. So i needed a wifi device, and the best was costing 7K PKR (some 82 US$, too much for me MAN ). This is what initiated a new mission type thing, how to save money. I knew my DELL 1555 was wifi enabled, and as a default I thought I can host a wifi connection as well. But this was not true, I did crazy thing under network and sharing center (using windows 7) and nothing gave fruits cause i never knew.

Untill another of my office colleague Nabeel Faruqui told me about Virtual Router (http://virtualrouter.codeplex.com/)

Review interested people read from here

It works for sure, my android is just connected to this Virtual Router powered internet connection shared wifi
netwok. It is super but just need to provide more help to end user.

My exprience is awesome, but with one hickup. First I need to tell a brief abt my hardware and setup, so here we go;

• DELL 15 Studio (1555)
• Windows 7 Ultimate,
• Inter WiFi Link 5100 AGN (wifi device)

You just download the setup, run it, it would install an application, restart the pc, you get a Virtual Router Manager v 0.9 beta sitting in your system tray with 2 textboxes and a drop down asking to enter connection parameters and a button as well saying 'Start Virtual Router'. And at this point, u must be thinking that by selecting my internet connection in the drop down and hitting the start bittin, i will get connected, but thats where u get the ONLY BIG BLOW in this software. Actually it would end all your hopes by just saying 'Virtual Router can not be started'.

Too bad it does not say anything more than that. It should be more meaningfull to find atleast what went wrong, it really misguides an end user here. However that said, it does not mean it just cant or wont work, this is why i started by saying 'IT WORKS, NOT FAKE.'

But u have to be a bit techy to experiment. You have to do a bit more than just hitting the start button. Since it is asking a wireless network to share as a wifi hotspot, it would require one, and your Internet connection is not the wireless connection u r connected to which can be used here, perhaps the internet connection can ONLY be shared on a pc to pc or a local LAN WAN type connection which u need to provide to the Virtual Router.
I solved it easily by

• going in the Network and Sharing Center,
• Clicking the 'Setup a new connection or network', first choice under 'Change you networking settings'
• This opens a popup window, select the last choice saying 'Setup a wireless ad hoc (computer to computer)'
• This would bring the next window with the heading 'Setup a wireless ad hoc (computer to computer)', just press next
• Would ask your wireless network connection parameters like Network name, security type and security key (password), enter these details as you require and hit next
• A new window saying the 'your entered network name' network is ready to use.
• Click close, This step actually has created a new virtual wireless connection under your device manager with the name 'Microsoft Virtual wifi Miniport Adapter'.

With all these details, my point actually is the above 5-6 steps are to be repeated each time you have to start the virtual router which is quite annoying. And not every end user can do it. Plus to this issue, no help whatsoever given to direct or walkthrough for endusers which is not good, if a person like me write a few lines in 20 minutes, then the team should provide more hepl I believe.

That said, Virtual Router is a gr8 thing, for me it is heaven cause it saved my 7K PKR rupees (just 82.something US$ :) ) to buy a wifi router and now i enjoy 36 MbPS wifi link on my Android. Dear tea, just increase the help and walkthrough, of course my review is not dead precise, i might have missed details im my points, i just want to help.

Some screenshots are atatched to easi-fi your wifi setup xp ;)