How to setup an ad-hoc WiFi network on your laptop for any Android phone without root

After some digging and going though a lot of paid apps to share WIFI hotspot, I have stumbled upon a very simple way to share your Laptop WIFI as ad hoc (Infrastructure mode) and use it on any Android phone without having to root and install a custom ROM that supports ad hoc like CyanogenMOD.

Usually out of the box, Android doesn’t support Ad-hoc unlike iOS and Windows Phone (due to unknown reasons) and will require you to either root the phone and edit the build.prop file or install a custom ROM. As we know these are absolutely not for beginners (atleast for now. Wait for the full CM installer).

So for the time being, follow these steps to create a WPA connection just using your cmd (Command prompt)

1. Start > Right click on My Computer > Manage > Services and Application > Services > and turn on Internet Connection Sharing (Will be set to manual, change it to automatic)

2. Right click on the network icon on the taskbar > open network and sharing center > Change Adapter settings > Find the current internet running adapter (For eg. if its the Ethernet, select the Ethernet adapter) > properties > sharing > allow sharing
3. Open CMD as an administrator

4. Type in the following

- netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=testwifi key=”123456789012″

-netsh wlan start hostednetwork

-netsh wlan show hostednetwork

5. Congrats, you have a working ad hoc that you can connect upto 32 devices.

Additionally,

And finally, since the Network has to be started again if you have restarted your PC or have woken it up from hibernation, a little tip:

- create a folder (doesn’t really matter where, I just put it in C), name it, say, “Wifi” or “AccessPoint” or whatever you like.
- Create two text documents in there, start.txt and stop.txt. (or on.txt and off.txt, again, it doesn’t matter)
- type netsh wlan start hostednetwork into start.txt and save
- type netsh wlan stop hostednetwork into stop.txt and save
- change both file’s extension to .bat
- right click on taskbar -> Toolbars -> New Toolbar
- browse to the folder created earlier

You now have an on/off switch for your Soft-Access-Point on your taskbar!