How to Share Internet Connection with Android Via Wi-Fi in Windows 7

This is late 2014 and almost every laptop or notebook has an inbuilt Wi-Fi adapter which lets you connect your laptop to the Internet through a router. Again, you can easily share the Internet connection from one laptop to another by creating a wireless Ad-Hoc network in Windows 7 and 8. Thus you can turn your Windows computer into a Wi-Fi hotspot to get your other computers connected to the internet without any wired setup. But if you tried to connect your non-Windows devices like Android, you might fail. The Ad-Hoc network does not allow to share Internet with Android or any other non-Windows device.
In short, you can turn your Windows computer (windows 7, Windows 8) into a Wi-Fi hotspot and connect other Windows 7 or Windows 8 computers with Internet using the same Wi-Fi hotspot. Here is how does it work.
In general, you can share the wired Internet connection from a computer which has Wi-Fi adapter wirelessly. All you need to create a Wi-Fi hotspot at your Windows computer (Learn the details from here) and you will be able to connect other windows devices with that hotspot to share Internet connection. It is an inbuilt feature of Windows 7 / 8 hence you don’t need to any complected workaround.
But if you want to connect any non-Windows device like Android, you will fail. Your Android device will not able to detect that hotspot using its Wi-Fi network adapter. There might be some software or special software to overcome this barrier and share the internet connection from Windows 7 with your Android through Wi-Fi. But here at techtipsapp we’ve tried to solve this matter in a different but simple way. Here is the short glimpse on how to share Internet connection with Android phone via Wi-fI in Windows 7.

Share Internet Connection with Android Phone Using Virtual Router in Windows 7

Unlike the inbuilt Windows 7 Wi-Fi hotspot, this method will configure your computer to act as a virtual router to share its Internet connection with all type of devices. You can do that by a simple DOS command. To run any DOS command in Windows 7 you can simply go to the start menu, then type “cmd” at the start menu search box, right-click on ‘cmd’ from the list and click ‘Run as administrator’.

At the command prompt, type the following command and hit ‘Enter’.
netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=SSIDName key=YourWifiPassword keyusage=persistent

Make sure to replace ‘SSIDName’ with your preferred name and ‘YourWifiPassword’ with your preferred password. Remember that the password must be of 8 digits.

The above command configures the virtual router. Now you must turn on the hosted network. To do it, run the following command in the command prompt.
netsh wlan start hostednetwork

Now, close the command prompt and open Windows run command box (press Win Key + R to open the Run command box). Type ncpa.cpl in the run command box and hit the ‘Enter’ key.

The ‘Network connections’ control panel window opens. You can see a new adapter has been created called ‘Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter’

The last job is to allow sharing the Internet connection from the network adapter which you generally use to connect with internet at your main computer. In my case I use LAN to connect Internet in my laptop. In case of LAN, right-click on the LAN adapter from the ‘Network connections’ window and select ‘Properties’.

At the ‘Network Connection Properties’ window, head to the ‘Sharing’ tab and check the box labeled as “Allow other users to connect through this computer’s Internet connection”.

You’re done! You can now connect your Android phone using that Wi-Fi hotspot. Turn your Android’s Wi-Fi on and you can see the SSID in the available network connections list at your Android phone. Select it and put the password of your hotspot. Your Android should share the Internet of your laptop or computer.
The Software Approach

There are plenty of software which automatically configure your laptop as virtual network adapter. Apart from that they also take care of other issues which are tough to resolve in manual configuration. Here are some of the best software to share Internet connection with Android via Wi-Fi in Windows 7 or Windows 8 : Connectify Hot Spot PRO ($55), VirtualRouter (free), WiFi Hotspot Creator (free), Thinix ($13 USD) Virtual WiFi Router (free) etc.