4s Hotspot tethering only works with USB and BT but not with wifi

Question

4s Hotspot tethering only works with USB and BT but not with wifi

Hi,

XP sp3 - iPhone 4s with ios 5.0.1 - on Three one plan

Tethering with wifi works to a friends Samsung phone, wifi on the pc confirmed working with the apple store wifi, tethering with USB and BT works with good connection speeds on my laptop but when i try to tether with wifi it connects to the laptop at 54mbps and all appears well, even claims to have received a small amount of data packets, but no data comes to any browser. The iPhone reports 1 connection to the hotspot and stays connected with a non-pulsing blue bar after the first minute.

In the PC i have tried this http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Change-the-order-of-network-protocol -bindings
I've deleted my firewall (zone alarm) completely and turned off windows firewall to go naked surfing for a second even though they don't cause a problem with USB tethering, makes no difference
I've deleted the network connection numerous times
"repaired" connection
dissabled and enabled the wifi
turned off the wireless with a hardware switch and on again
disabled bluetooth
rebooted many times
reinstalled itunes (latest)
loads more things i can't remember

This is causing me a nightmare. I've been through everything i can find online, been to the Apple store genius bar (genius appeared to have sub zero knowledge / interest as it involved a MS machine), been to a Three shop (legally not allowed to touch my PC apparently) and been to a Sony shop (laptop make, not their fault if my iphone doesn't work). All very frustrating.

Please help if you can! Any suggestion will be tried unless it involves sledge hammers or lakes, and only then for a few more days at most.

iPhone 4S, Windows XP Pro

Posted on Nov 19, 2011 2:44 PM

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Answer 1

modular747

Level 6

19,674 points

Nov 19, 2011 2:53 PM in response to parvinfromlondon

Any suggestion will be tried unless it involves sledge hammers or lakes, and only then for a few more days at most.

How about a 12 gauge shotgun... If not, did you disable BlueTooth connection before trying WiFi?

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Answer 2

Nov 19, 2011 3:06 PM in response to modular747

Turned off bluetooth on phone, turned off hotspot and on again, phone asked if i wanted to turn on bluetooth or go with USB and wifi only, said usb/wifi only. Still nothing. Rebooted PC and iphone. Turned on hotspot, pc seemlessly connects to network, still no data comes.

One odd thing is zone alarm asks me to "select a security zone for the wireless network at ip address: *******.0" every time and doesn't seem to remember the setting over sessions. When i get the status of the connection the ip address is *****.2 and default gateway is same ********.1 Not sure if that's anything.

Also getting a javascript error about an undefinded component (trustcheckermozilla) since i updated zonealarm but as i said even completely uninstalling zonealarm made no difference. I'll update firefox as well but tried with IE and still no data.

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Answer 3

modular747

Level 6

19,674 points

Nov 19, 2011 3:15 PM in response to parvinfromlondon

One odd thing is zone alarm asks me to "select a security zone ....... Not sure if that's anything.

It's everything, in fact. DISABLE ZONE ALARM COMPLETELY. Never leave it active when connecting to any Apple device, including when tethering, syncing, updating, or restoring your iPhone.

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Answer 4

Nov 19, 2011 3:31 PM in response to modular747

My first thought was firewall but even uninstalling it completely makes no difference. Just disabled it now again though and still no data is getting through to either firefox or IE. Getting average about 300kbps download with a USB tether so signal and network are ok. That's with zone alarm on.

Just relised the iphone doesn't show up in itunes when tethered by hotspot wifi to the pc, with a usb connection it does show up, syncs, connects to the store and downloads etc

Checked the "sync over wifi" option, i don't have a home wifi network here (on a dongle now) but tried pluging the iphone into power and i don't get the option to sync over the iphones wifi link to the pc (why not?) so i guess i shouldn't expect to see the iphone in itunes without a usb connection, though tell me if i'm wrong.

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Answer 5

Nov 20, 2011 1:37 AM in response to parvinfromlondon

I should have said this was the same with ios 5, i updated to 501 in the hope it might help but it hasn't.

Any other suggestions?

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Answer 6

Nov 20, 2011 11:38 AM in response to parvinfromlondon

Went into a "carphone warehouse" where i bought the phone today and found them much more helpful than the Three network store or the apple store so i'm glad i actually didn't buy it direct from either. I tried my hotspot on their windows 7 laptop and it showed the same issue - connected to the PC via wifi but no data came down the pipe. I did a reset (off+home) and lo and behold everything started working fine. Took it home and back to not working again. Did a reset again and it made no difference. Did a full phone "delete all data and settings reset" and for a few minutes i had a few bytes of data getting through with google news half loading, then nothing more. USB hotspot still working fine at full speed.

Is this a phone issue do you think?

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Answer 7

modular747

Level 6

19,674 points

Nov 20, 2011 11:43 AM in response to parvinfromlondon

This is certainly a hardware problem in your phone. The only solution is to get it replaced under warranty.

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Answer 8

Nov 20, 2011 1:52 PM in response to modular747

I'l go back with that in mind tomorrow, it'll be interesting to see how they respond to an intermittant problem which of course won't occur when i want it to.

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Answer 9

Nov 21, 2011 12:44 PM in response to parvinfromlondon

IT support friend of mine sorted the problem -

In "Wireless Network Connection" properties scroll down to "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)" -> Properties -> select "Obtain DNS server address automatically"

Problem solved. Still a mystery why it was set to a specific wrong DNS as i didn't do it, why my wifi worked in the apple store and why the hotpost didn't work for a time on another laptop, and how it worked for a few seconds on my latop.

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