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Level 1

0 points

Wi-Fi Personal Hotspot Not Working Under iOS 5

I have tethering on my contract and regularly used my iPhone 4 as a Wi-Fi hotspot under iOS 4. I upgraded to iOS 5 and found straight away that the Wi-Fi functionality with the personal hotspot doesn't appear to work. However tethering using the Personal Hotspot with USB and Bluetooth work fine.

As before, what I've found is that either flicking to and from the "Personal Hotspot" page or switching the Personal Hotspot "Off" and then "On" causes the "Wi-Fi" status under sttings to change from "Not Connected" to "On" but this time no Wi-Fi enabled device can discover the phone. The difference I've noticed is that the Wi-Fi status is "On" a far shorter amount of time than under iOS 4, but this should be long enough for discovery.

I tried changing the phone name, as mine has a space in, and although the phone worked as is before I've heard this can be a problem. Briefly (a few seconds) the phone was discoverable from a laptop using Wi-Fi and then disappeared for good. I've reset the phone network settings and there's no change.

Any other suggestions?

iPhone 4, iOS 5

Posted on Oct 13, 2011 7:58 AM

74 replies

dutango

Level 1

0 points

Nov 30, 2011 3:03 AM in response to iainjo

I’m not sure if this will work for everyone, but it has worked for me.

When activating the personal hotspot on the iPhone4 go to the personal hotspot screen, press the “ON” button. Then press the Wi-Fi password button and press “Done” to confirm your password. Then remain on the personal hotspot screen and don’t let your phone go to sleep until it connects.

It may take a minute or two but it should connect, for whatever reason it now seems that the personal hotspot is only discoverable while on this screen.

At least for my iPhone.

Nov 30, 2011 9:10 PM in response to iainjo

Yes dutango, you are right. It worked for me as well. But still some times it is not discoverable, I dont know whether Apple is already familiar with this bug or no.. They should fix it in their upcoming IOS Update.

Dec 2, 2011 5:17 AM in response to iainjo

I found using the mobile hotspot "button" on the setting main page doesn't work. If I go to general/network/personal hotspot I sometimes have to try 5-10 times but eventually this function turns on. Strangely if I turn it on where there are WIFI networks broadcasting I have a high probability of success, however if I turn it on in the sticks where I'm using my iPhone to access the internet for my PC it doesn't work. I had three laptops watching it as I originally suspected a PC issue but it wasn't all three saw the WIFI popup at once.

When is occurs the WIFI is enabled and the personal hotspot button turns on/off but doesn't seem to enable the software that is switching on the function in the firmware/hardware. This bug is a PITA.

jvalenty

Level 1

5 points

Dec 16, 2011 8:01 AM in response to douglas_skier

Same general problem here. My 4S ios 5.0.1 with ATT hotspot drops the connection to my iPad after about 10 minutes. The iPad works fine with other hotspots and my home wifi, so it has to be the phone's problem.

Dec 17, 2011 5:17 AM in response to iainjo

I think I've found the secret recipe...

In settings, General, turn off bluetooth, then go to Network,make sure Wi-Fi is on then turn Personal Hotspot on and remain on this screen. You should see the iPhone in your WiFi list shortly. This has worked 5 out of 5 times..I will let you know if it isnt consistent. This is good because using the USB to get to the outside world is inconvenient to say the least..

Apparently the latest update(OS5.x) has a bug that prevents WiFi and Bluetooth transmission simultaneously?

Dec 20, 2011 1:37 PM in response to iainjo

I had the same problem after countless times speaking with my network provider and searching around I found that the solution that worked from was to change my my phone name as Apples adds an apostraphe 'to the name for example

joe becomes joe's Iphone

go to settings >> General >> About and take out the apostraphe

Turn hotspot off and back on

hope this works for you as it is very frustrating

jakudo

Level 1

68 points

Dec 20, 2011 9:49 PM in response to leighfromsydney

Interesting idea, however, don't work for me:(

Dec 21, 2011 3:38 AM in response to jakudo

Apple support also suggested removing all non-characters from my iPhone name (was doug's iphone) too. I tried this and it didn't improve anything. I tried removing the space and replacing it with a dash or underscore, again no improvement.

The ONLY thing that has helped was disabling bluetooth prior to firing up the personal hotspot and remaining on the setup/password screen until it connected. I suspect it is a conflict in the firmware where it decides what to turn on, and if you only give it one choice... you win.

Kuwaiti-

Level 1

0 points

Dec 24, 2011 4:24 AM in response to leighfromsydney

weird!!

this worked for me in a second. How come that this annoying issue is only related to the name of my iPhone!!

anyway thanks. 🙂

chrdxn

Level 1

0 points

Dec 29, 2011 12:25 PM in response to iainjo

Does anyone know a solution to the problem raised earlier in this thread?: "The other issue I have is windows 7 now keeps asking to update the network location (home,public etc) every single time I connect to the hotspot."

This happens to me every time I connect with WiFi or Bluetooth. I changed it to automatically select public so it doesn't prompt anymore, but it keeps adding new networks and naming them with a digit added at the end (ie. Network 1, Network 2, etc.). Can this be prevented?

AdnanB

Level 1

5 points

Jan 1, 2012 3:00 PM in response to maine11

I've been having this issue too. It's a big pain now to get it to work while in in iOS 4 it would work from the first try.

Please report this to Apple to bring attention to this:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

seanb007

Level 1

0 points

Jan 7, 2012 3:32 PM in response to AdnanB

Hi All,

I have been trying to wrap my brains over this problem and found that my TV Wireless Sender was blocking the Wireless Channel 1 which i found my iPhone was using when it gradually appeared a few times on the inSSIDer tool.

Unplugging the TV Sender allowed me to connect to my iPhone with no problems!

Hope this helps!

Sean

PS any way to change the channel on the iPhone??

Jan 7, 2012 3:46 PM in response to seanb007

This can be worked around, it even detects connections with Unicode named characters.

Turn off bluetooth to maintain maximum Wi-Fi connectivity and bandwidth
If your hotspot doesn't show up in iOS5, turn off personal hotspot, on, refresh list of network, off, on, refresh until you see it. It's an intermittent issue in iOS5.

Hope it helps.

For me, it takes up to 10 tries or so.