IPhone 4 Personal Hotspot trouble w WiFi: laptop sees it; but won't connect
scoutiegirl
Newbie

Hi,

 

Just am activating all the features of my IPhone 4, upgraded to the $20 data plan as well.  Activated the hotspot under Settings-General-network-personal hotspot on, and created a password.  WiFi is on, cellular data is on, bluetooth is on. 

 

When I open my list of wireless networks on my laptop (running Windows XP), it lists all networks, including "Administrator's IPhone", but when I try to connect, it looks like it is trying to connect.  Then, I get an error message "unable to open network.....may be out of range....refresh list and try again".  I'm unable to get to the password screen.  Have refreshed it many times....I've been to the Verizon store, Apple store and my laptop manufacturer level 2 tech line. 

 

I can tether it, and connect to the internet that way.  However, neither the Bluetooth or the Personal Hotspot WiFi works with my laptop, which is a fairly new Fujitsu tablet, running Windows XP.

 

Cannot find support about this...would appreciate help.  The $20 data plan may be worth it if I can get the WiFi working...is Verizon/Apple working on a patch of some kind for this?

 

Thanks very much

 

   

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Re: Phone 4 Personal Hotspot trouble w WiFi: laptop sees it; but won't connect
GinaH_VZW
Contributor - Level 3

 

The steps you mentioned are correct to connect to your computer's WiFi manager. The only thing that stood out is the name of your network "Administrators Iphone" unless that is the name you set. Check your personal hotspot setting under "Other users can look for your shared network using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth under the name "....""  to make sure the name matches.
Just another suggestion, if you still have the iphone, call Apple support as they are very knowledgeable about these types of issues. You can call 800-275-2273 or send them an email from their contact us page at www.apple.com/support/iphone/contact 
Here is also direct link to Apple's Understanding Personal Hotspot page: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4517
GinaH_VZW Support

The steps you mentioned are correct to connect to your computer's WiFi manager. The only thing that stood out is the name of your network "Administrators Iphone" unless that is the name you set. Check your personal hotspot setting under "Other users can look for your shared network using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth under the name "....""  to make sure the name matches.


Just another suggestion, if you still have the iphone, call Apple support as they are very knowledgeable about these types of issues. You can call 800-275-2273 or send them an email from their contact us page at www.apple.com/support/iphone/contact 

 

Here is also direct link to Apple's Understanding Personal Hotspot page: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4517

 

 

GinaH_VZW Support

 

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Re: IPhone 4 Personal Hotspot trouble w WiFi: laptop sees it; but won't connect
TBhouston
Specialist - Level 1

Have you tried turning off the bluetooth and just trying to connect via wifi?

 

If you have another active smartphone it would be nice to be able to test if you can connect to the iphone wifi on that device. It would really help target where the break down is happening.

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Re: IPhone 4 Personal Hotspot trouble w WiFi: laptop sees it; but won't connect
scoutiegirl
Newbie

Thanks for the advice.  I have tried it without Bluetooth on, and it again did not open.  You have a good idea with trying another smartphone....I think I'll try to hang out at a Verizon store and see if I can test it there.  My IPhone does work with a Mac (tried it in an Apple store....).  Thanks again. 

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Re: Phone 4 Personal Hotspot trouble w WiFi: laptop sees it; but won't connect
GinaH_VZW
Contributor - Level 3

 

The steps you mentioned are correct to connect to your computer's WiFi manager. The only thing that stood out is the name of your network "Administrators Iphone" unless that is the name you set. Check your personal hotspot setting under "Other users can look for your shared network using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth under the name "....""  to make sure the name matches.
Just another suggestion, if you still have the iphone, call Apple support as they are very knowledgeable about these types of issues. You can call 800-275-2273 or send them an email from their contact us page at www.apple.com/support/iphone/contact 
Here is also direct link to Apple's Understanding Personal Hotspot page: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4517
GinaH_VZW Support

The steps you mentioned are correct to connect to your computer's WiFi manager. The only thing that stood out is the name of your network "Administrators Iphone" unless that is the name you set. Check your personal hotspot setting under "Other users can look for your shared network using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth under the name "....""  to make sure the name matches.


Just another suggestion, if you still have the iphone, call Apple support as they are very knowledgeable about these types of issues. You can call 800-275-2273 or send them an email from their contact us page at www.apple.com/support/iphone/contact 

 

Here is also direct link to Apple's Understanding Personal Hotspot page: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4517

 

 

GinaH_VZW Support

 

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Re: Phone 4 Personal Hotspot trouble w WiFi: laptop sees it; but won't connect
scoutiegirl
Newbie

Thanks for your advice.  The IPhone defaults to "Administrator's Iphone" as the name of the network and does not allow you to change it.  And thank you for the Apple and other support info.  I have been in touch with them, and also with the Verizon Apple support phone line....they are having the Verizon national repair board take a look at my line to see if something is up with that.  I'll post more info when I have it -  thank you.

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Re: Phone 4 Personal Hotspot trouble w WiFi: laptop sees it; but won't connect
shgouel
Newbie

We have had this same problem too. Can connect mac via wifi fine, but has issues on older win PC with XP on it. Same error message i think.

The name of the wifi access point form the phone is "Susan asasx's iPhone" and the appostraphe would show u all weird on windows. This is stated as a known issue by apple, on windows machines. We tried renaming the device by plugging the iphone into a mac with itunes and renaming it by clicking on the device in itunes and hitting enter and typing in a new name. Then we turned off all wifi and turned back on. This did rename the wifi name to a simpler "Susan", but it didnt help the windows machine.

The windows machine has some craptastic 3rd party IBM driver software on it to handle wifi connections. I think this may be getting in the way.

Ive seen now many many issues with wifi and I think many of them have to do with how the wifi is expecting authentication and security to be handled..... there might be minute differences between WPA2 and WPA2 PKI authentication types, or there might even be differences in how Microsoft auths to a WPA2 encrypted auth server and how Mac does it. Its pretty advanced stuff that even mac and verizon techs dont know details on.

if you can update wifi drivers or the software that controls your wifi (for us, IBM has some of its own software on top the OS to do stuff like wifi connecting), then you should def upgrade this.

Let us know if anyone figures anything out.

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Re: Phone 4 Personal Hotspot trouble w WiFi: laptop sees it; but won't connect
cpwil1
Newbie

My Droid will connect to my iPhone4 via WiFi. However, My laptop cannot connect.

 

The laptop connects just fine when physically tethered via USB, but not WiFi. 

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Re: Phone 4 Personal Hotspot trouble w WiFi: laptop sees it; but won't connect
mikedamirault
Contributor - Level 3
scoutiegirl, you should be able to change the name of your iPhone if you want by syncing it with iTunes and change/edit the name when it shows up on the left pane in iTunes, it should then use that name for your WiFi tethering SSID

As for the connection issue, it may be some sort of timeout issue, I haven't tried it with XP or any Windows OS, but I have noticed it took longer than usual for my MacBook Air running OS X Leopard to connect to my iPhone, it could be that it's taking longer than XP will allow
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Re: Phone 4 Personal Hotspot trouble w WiFi: laptop sees it; but won't connect
Rivergoat
Newbie

I read this thread and have the same issue. I am a new iPhone user, have a Dell laptop (older Inspiron 8200) with a Belkin F5D7011 wi-fi card, which is supposed to support WPA2 (and I've not had any connection issues in any wi-fi cafe). When I try to use the iPhone Personal Hotspot I do seem to need to let Windows (XP sp3 btw) manage the connection, not the software of the Belkin card. I will see the wi-fi connection, but clicking connect (and entering the password in the  "key" field) brings up the "connecting to network" screen with progress bar/dots, but it merely times out and will not connect via wi-fi at all. I have put iTune software on the desktop and am tethering via USB successfully, but would like to be able to use the wi-fi on the laptop as well. Seeing that others have similar issues, I would also like to see a positive response on this. On the phone with Verizon tech support I got nowhere, as the people I spoke to admitted it's new to them, and they didn't know much about it.

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Re: Phone 4 Personal Hotspot trouble w WiFi: laptop sees it; but won't connect
mikedamirault
Contributor - Level 3

Rivergoat wrote:

I read this thread and have the same issue. I am a new iPhone user, have a Dell laptop (older Inspiron 8200) with a Belkin F5D7011 wi-fi card, which is supposed to support WPA2 (and I've not had any connection issues in any wi-fi cafe). When I try to use the iPhone Personal Hotspot I do seem to need to let Windows (XP sp3 btw) manage the connection, not the software of the Belkin card. I will see the wi-fi connection, but clicking connect (and entering the password in the  "key" field) brings up the "connecting to network" screen with progress bar/dots, but it merely times out and will not connect via wi-fi at all. I have put iTune software on the desktop and am tethering via USB successfully, but would like to be able to use the wi-fi on the laptop as well. Seeing that others have similar issues, I would also like to see a positive response on this. On the phone with Verizon tech support I got nowhere, as the people I spoke to admitted it's new to them, and they didn't know much about it.


Like I said in my previous post to the OP, I have gotten it to work on my MacBook Air, though it did take a long time to do so, and OS X doesn't seem to have a timeout like Windows does, I have noticed that once initially connected, it doesn't take as long to connect the next time
What's the reason why you need to let Windows manage the connection?  I usually prefer that as Windows usually does a better job at managing wireless cards anyway, though in this case, if the Belkin software doesn't have a timeout, it may eventually allow it to connect to the iPhone
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