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Personal hotspot not showing up

I am trying to tether my iPhone 4 to my iPad, been following instructions, all updates in place (4.3.3) the tethering plan paid for and ready, but when I go to the settings-general-network there is no words saying personal hotspot. I have seen other people's iPhones, and this does show up on theirs, but not on mine! Any ideas?

iPhone 4, iOS 4.3.2, Actually 4.3.3 iOS in place

Posted on Jul 3, 2011 9:54 AM

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18 replies

Aug 3, 2011 12:32 PM in response to Diana891

I have the same problem. My carrier (t-mobilde.de) has confirmed that tethering is enabled for my contract.

Obviously the problem is that I had restored my new iPhone 4 from a backup of my former iPhone 3 GS. Apple Express Lane says this would not work and I should configure the iPhone 4 as "new iPhone" in iTunes.


I don't like this because I am going to loose a lot of non-syncable data if I do that.


By the way: if I reset the iPhone, the personal hotspot menu shows up. If I then restore from the old backup it is missing again.


I hope Apple will fix this soon.

Aug 5, 2011 10:24 AM in response to DarthOSX

I guess you have restored your iPhone from a backup instead of registering as "new iPhone". Then iTunes copies your old profile to your iPhone which prevents the personal hotspot feature from showing up.


If you register as "new iphone" you can sync all your apps, contacts etc. but you will lose all data stored within apps, settings etc. :-(


I hope Apple will resolve this with iOS 5. Weit and see...

Oct 23, 2011 9:34 AM in response to WvH_De

iOS 5 has great new features. But concerning the personal hotspot I was quite disappointed, when I had done the update. Still the menu item could not be found.


So I decided to configure my iPhone as "new iPhone" instead of restoring it from my old backups. Like DarthOSX I spent hours to bring my data back, using advice from http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4137 (which is quite a joke from my perspective).


Finally, the personal hotspot is working properly. But I have not been able to bring back all the data into my iPhone.


Not a real good performance from Apple ...

Nov 27, 2011 2:55 AM in response to Diana891

The Mrs had the same problem couldnt find Hotspot but on ios 5.01. Lucky I had done some research and otherwise would have done a restore like most for no reason. Anyways I found the answer on Whirlpool and simple the solution was. Like most of us we were looking for Hotspot in settings! but guess what all you had to do is do the following: Settings>General>Network and right at the bottom you have Personal Hotspot. But please NOTE: that after using it once or activating it for the first time you will find that it now shows in settings also and wont have to go to network anymore.

Anyways I hope this will help out others before they decide to do Restore.

Personal hotspot not showing up

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