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I am following this tutorial to set up a Wifi hotspot from my Windows 10 PC.

When I run netsh set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=Your_SSID key=Your_Passphrase, I think it uses the adapter called Wi-Fi. I have a USB Wifi dongle that I want to use for my hotspot, which is listed as Wi-Fi 2.

Is there a way I can change the above command to use the USB dongle instead of my laptop's built-in Wifi adapter?

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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The key here is to disable the adapters that you don't want the hostednetwork to start on. If you only have one active adapter and run:

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=Your_SSID key=Your_Passphrase
netsh wlan start hostednetwork

then it will auto assign itself to that adapter. ( If you do not know the names of your network adapters, you can get a list by entering netsh wlan show drivers at the command prompt. Be sure to put the adapter name in quotes in the following commands if there is a space in the names.)

Since you have 2 wireless adapters, wifi1 and wifi2, and you want it to run on wifi2, you can disable wifi1, run script, then enable wifi1 again. This forces hostednetwork on wifi2.

Code:

netsh interface set interface name="Wi-Fi1" admin=disabled
netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=Your_SSID key=Your_Passphrase
netsh wlan start hostednetwork
netsh interface set interface name="Wi-Fi1" admin=enabled

Note: May need to run this batch as administrator.

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  • But what if you want to have both enabled because you want to create a brdige between them o because you want to use them for different things?
    – skan
    Feb 13, 2018 at 17:53
  • @skan They are both enabled. You just turn one off for a brief second to apply your hostednetwork to the desired interface. Note that you cannot apply a hostednetwork (virtual AP) to a bridged interface or bridge an adapter using the AP. "bridging is prohibited between the AP adapter and any other adapters in the system" msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/…
    – Narzard
    Feb 13, 2018 at 19:27
  • I have two adapters, I want to use one a client to connect my laptop to my wifi and use the other as an AP to repeat the signal.
    – skan
    Feb 14, 2018 at 17:52
  • what if you want to run the commands on startup?
    – stackunderflow
    Jun 13, 2019 at 5:40
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    @jerinho then save the above as a .bat file, open Task Scheduler and setup as normal with the trigger being set to the "on startup" option.
    – Narzard
    Jun 13, 2019 at 13:25
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For those of you trying to find the interface name you can issue the following command and follow the exising answer.

netsh wlan show drivers
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