windows 7 virtual wireless adapter keeps going to sleep
- by conners
Just a quick question that I can't see mentioned anywhere online. I have a Windows 7 box configured like these guys recommend http://www.itgeekdiary.com/windows-7-as-an-wi-fi-access-point/ simply so that I can have my Windows 7 box as a wifi access point or a wifi emitter. It's also called a Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter.
But it powers off and shuts down automatically and stops working. Basically everything works as intended and then - well -it will stopped working when I am not at the Windows 7 PC for a long time.
The problem seems to be that every time my PC goes to "power save / sleep" and in the morning the Windows 7 machine "wakes" but blooming heck the wifi has stopped and you have to power cycle the PC (which is very uncool).
When I power Cycle I have to do the following as administrator
C:\Windows\System32\netsh.exe wlan start hostednetwork
I then tried a gazllion things involving services and power management and eventually discovered that if I run the following commands as administrator it will be ok (for a bit) but every 3rd ot 4th time I try this "trick" it simply fails.
the trick that seems to work 3 out of 4 times (i.e. "most" of the time)
C:\Windows\System32\netsh.exe wlan stop hostednetwork
C:\Windows\System32\netsh.exe wlan start hostednetwork
But why does this only work "some" of the time?
What else I did by myself:
on every manage adapter properties (that relates to the wifi) I right clicked [configure] [power management] /disabled/ "allow the computer to power off to save power" <- this made no difference
Also (and this is a bit annoying) there is no system tray app/GUI for the Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter output signal ... none... so (lame as it sounds) the ONLY way I can check if it's on is to physically go to another device and SCAN.. lame
so my question can probably be solved by any of the following:
a) can I stop Windows 7 sleeping this wifi when the machine sleeps
b) can I force Windows to force wake this process on wake? if so how?
c) what is the service / process REALLY called and how do I restart it if it crashes
d) how can I flush the wifi properly rather power cycle the host machine
e) anyone have a link to an program or app that can sit in the system tray that
shows windows 7 wifi hotspot emission status (on/off/etc etc)
Since I am a programmer I can easily write a vbs script / windows exe to fix this (and I will share this solution) and the gui problem if I can work out the actual service that is running that netsh stops/starts
