Win10AdHocNetwork

Ad-Hoc or local hosted networks were/are a popular way to connect devices wirelessly without a network router. However, in more recent updates and operating systems particularly Windows 10, support for hosted networks has been rolled back and even removed from newer network adapters.

Microsoft has announced that Wi-Fi card manufacturers should no longer support the hostednetwork protocol, and that newer cards and firmware updates should use the newer Wi-Fi Direct APIs for creating wireless access points.

However, some of us just want to do it the tried-and-true way, without having to learn a new API or wait for more mainstream support.

The main value of this project is contained in the README, where I will describe how to set Windows 10 up to automatically create a local hosted network on your computer at log-in.

Included in this project are two batch files, one for just simply creating the Ad-Hoc network if hosted networks are supported on your wireless adapter, and another for automatically creating an Ad-Hoc network with a WiFi USB Adapter Dongle that supports Ad-Hoc networking.

Getting Started

You will need to do a few checks before determining if hosted networking is supported by your computer. Open up a command prompt window by pressing WIN+R and entering cmd.exe, by pressing WIN+X and selecting the Command Prompt from the Windows Power User menu, or by whatever other means you prefer to get to the Windows Command Processor.

In the Command Prompt window, enter the following command to check if your network adapter driver supports ad-hoc or hosted networking:

netsh wlan show drivers

In the output of the command, look for the line Hosted network supported : If it says "Yes", then your network adapter supports ad-hoc networking and you're good to go.

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If it says "No", there are many different schools of thought to get around this, but the easiest I've found is purchasing a separate WiFi adapter dongle that supports hosted networks and using that. Other potential solutions include:

If this worked before updating Windows 10, you can try downgrading your drivers to a previous version
You can also try the opposite and upgrade your network adapter driver to the newest version and see if it changes anything.
If all you're looking for is a way to share internet connection between your computer/laptop and a mobile device such as a phone or tablet, you can just use the built-in Mobile Hotspot feature in Windows 10 to bridge your internet connection to your device.

Prerequisites

A network adapter that supports ad-hoc networking (see above).
Administrator privileges/login

Set-Up

Download Batch Files

Download either AdHoc.bat or AdHoc_WiFiDongle.bat depending on which one matches your computer's set up and save it in a location where it won't be accidentally moved or deleted.

Customize Ad-Hoc Network

Open the Batch file in a text editor (I use Notepad++) and modify the ssid= and key= values to whatever you want your hosted network's name and password to be. Note: The Key needs to be longer than 8 characters long or an error will be thrown and the creation of the network will fail

Create a Task in the Windows Task Scheduler

Press Win+R and type in "taskschd.msc" into the command line. Press Enter to open the Windows Task Scheduler.
In the Actions pane on the right-hand side of the Task Scheduler window, select Create Task... to launch the Create Task window.
In the General tab of the Create Task window:
1. Name your new task. (I used "CreateAdHoc")
2. Select the radio button to Run whether user is logged on or not.
3. Check the box to Run with highest privileges.
In the Triggers tab:
1. Select New...
  1. Select At log on in the "Begin the task" drop-down.
  2. Click OK.
In the Actions tab:
1. Select New...
  1. Make sure Start a program is selected in the "Action" drop-down.
  2. Click Browse... next to "Program/script".
  3. Navigate to where you saved AdHoc.bat, select the file, and click Open.
  4. Click OK to exit the New Action window.
Set any additional parameters in the Conditions and Settings tabs.
Click OK to create the task. You will be prompted to enter the Admin credentials before the task is saved.

If everything works out like it's supposed to, you will see a new network in the Network and Sharing Center with the SSID you configured earlier.

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Authors

Jason Orr - Initial work - jasonrorr

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE.md file for details

jasonrorr / Win10AdHocNetwork