Jonas Stawski

If you were lucky like me and were at the Microsoft BUILD conference last September then you probably have a Samsung Series 7 Tablet repurposed for the Windows 8 preview. The good thing about that tablet is that it also came with a free 1 year of AT&T 3G. I have since replaced the developer preview with the consumer preview and wasn’t able to find an easy way to share my 3G connection as a hotspot. I remember that used to be very easy in the developer preview, but for some reason it is not in the consumer preview. A little searching online and found this tutorial on how to create a hotspot, but had to do it in different order:

1. Since there is no keyboard on the tablet, just bring the Charms Barand search for cmd
2. Swipe down on the only found item and click on Run as administrator
3. Type:
• NETSH WLAN SET HOSTEDNETWORK MODE = ALLOW ssid=”NETWORKNAME” key=”YourWpa2Key”
• NETSH WLAN START HOSTEDNETWORK
4. Bring the Charms Bar again and search for ncpa.cpl and click on the only result it finds.
5. You should have the list of network adapters, including the one we just created. Right click (touch and hold) on the 3G one (mine is called Mobile broadband) and click properties
6. Go to sharing tab and check the “Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s Internet connection”
7. Select the just created network connection under the “Home networking connection:”. Mine is called Wi-Fi 2.
8. Hit OK.

Enjoy your free hotspot. I’m on my way to Starbucks to give this a try!

Happy hotspotting!