internet connection not shared by my laptop turned wifi hotspot

Hi...

I've set up my internet-connected laptop (Acer Aspire One with Windows 7 Starter) as wifi hotspot. The hotspot works to the extent that it lets another computer connect, but it does not provide (pass through) the internet access I have (via 3G USB modem).

While searching the net for useful information I came across the recent thread
http://www.sevenforums.com/network-...r-i-turned-my-laptop-into-wifi-hotspot-2.html

Following up on the two tutorials mentioned in that thread,
Windows 7 Tip of the Week: Use Wireless Hosted Networking to Share An Internet Connection Wirelessly | FAQ/Tip content from Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows
and
Windows 7 Hotspot: Share Wifi With Your Laptop
I noticed that on my laptop the important Share tab is missing that can be seen in the first image in the first tutorial and also in the first image in the section "Changing Adapter Settings" in the secodn tutorial.

The network adapters I can see on my laptop are

Local Area connection
(unplugged)

3G Internet
USB modem

Wireless connection
Atheros AR5B95

Wireless Connection 2
Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter

Many thanks in advance for suggestions :tip:and probing questions

If the sharing tab is missing then it means that the driver isn't up to date. About the only way to fix that is to look for a more recent version of the wireless driver. Just updating or reinstalling the driver might be enough although some adaptors simply can't support this feature as per Paul Thurrott's page on this.

Hi, thanks for the comment...

chev65 said:

If the sharing tab is missing then it means that the driver isn't up to date. About the only way to fix that is to look for a more recent version of the wireless driver.

Click to expand...

Just checked for drivers and was told that the Atheros WiFi driver was up to date. Also, the driver for the Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter was updated.

Just updating or reinstalling the driver might be enough although some adaptors simply can't support this feature as per Paul Thurrott's page on this.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately I am not able to determine at this point whether my laptop is principally incapable of doing this or whether there is a setting or software problem that can be fixed.

I deleted the hotspot setup today and started from scratch to set up a new adhoc network connection. When the screen came up where one is invited to set up network sharing, I was told that I did not have the privileges to configure network sharing. That might explain why the sharing tab does not show up anywhere afterward.

That error message may have come up during the initial setup (yesterday), as well, but I had not registered it at that time - anyway, my user account is the admin account on the laptop, so I have no idea where to look for a solution.

sips said:

I deleted the hotspot setup today and started from scratch to set up a new adhoc network connection. When the screen came up where one is invited to set up network sharing, I was told that I did not have the privileges to configure network sharing. That might explain why the sharing tab does not show up anywhere afterward.

That error message may have come up during the initial setup (yesterday), as well, but I had not registered it at that time - anyway, my user account is the admin account on the laptop, so I have no idea where to look for a solution.

Click to expand...

If you are the admin then you already have the permissions for this, this setting is on the second page of the network adaptor. But certain drivers do not support this feature and it seems that are using one of them.

Network sharing can be different than sharing a network connection.