Disable hosted network support in a Windows WiFi driver

Question

What

How can I alter my Surface Pro's WiFi adapter to remove its support for the Hosted Network feature in Windows? I don't want to disable the hosted network feature for ALL adapters, just for one. I want to do this so that it will use a different adapter for the hosted network.

Why

I have a Microsoft Surface Pro 3. They messed up, and the built in WiFi adapter does not work properly. It cannot start a hosted network. I have an external adapter I can use for this purpose. It works great, except you cannot tell Windows which adapter to bind the virtual miniport adapter to. Because support for that feature is a requirement for new drivers, the crappy built in adapter claims to support it (but doesn't really). This means every time I want to start the hosted network feature I have to disable the built in adapter in the device manager, enable the hosted network, then re-enable the built in adapter. I still use the built in adapter, and sometimes use both at the same time. So I'm hoping there is some way I can turn off the support in that driver so it will be ignored by the hosted network feature without having to be fully disabled.

Answer 1

You can create a batch file that does exactly the same thing as you do, but it will do it for you and save you a lot of time!

Open notepad and type the following text and save it as whateveryouwant.bat

netsh interface set interface name="Wi-Fi" admin=disabled
netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow
netsh wlan start hostednetwork
netsh interface set interface name="Wi-Fi" admin=enabled

This will temporary disable the primary Wi-Fi adapter, activate your secondary Wi-Fi adapter (probably named Wi-Fi 2) for the hosting feature and then re enable the primary Wi-Fi adapter.

If you have different adapter names or would like to use another adapter than the secondary wifi-adapter for the hosting, just change Wi-Fi in the batch file to the name of the adapter you DON'T want to use for the hosting feature.

Now you can just run this batch file as administrator every time you have your external Wi-Fi adapter plugged in and want to host a network from it. To make the batch file allways run as administrator you can create a shortcut to it (right click it and choose Create shortcut) and then:

1. Right-click on the shortcut you just created.
2. Click Properties.
3. Under the Shortcut tab, click on Advanced.
4. Check the Run as administrator checkbox.

Now you can just double click the shortcut and the batch file will be run as an administrator!