Utility to provide automatic ad-hoc wireless network connections in Windows Vista Business
Hi Guys I know this is a development forum but I am hoping someone will be able to help me.
What I Want:
Utility to provide automatic ad-hoc wireless network connections in Windows Vista Business.
Reason:
Every time I start Vista, I have to manually connect to the ad-hoc wireless connection for my printer.
Background:
I have a HP Pavilion DV8310TX notebook computer and HP OfficeJet 7410 all-in-one printer.
My notebook came loaded with Windows XP Pro SP2 and my printer came with its own drivers.
Under Windows XP, I was able to setup an ad-hoc wireless network which connected automatically.
After upgrading to Windows Vista Business I found it does not allow automatic ad-hoc connections.
Now every time I start my computer I have to manually start the ad-hoc wireless network connection.
Can someone please find me a solution because Microsoft is unwilling to change Windows Vista?
This is the Peer-to-Peer Networking forum so I am not an expert on wireless networking. There was a lot of press characterizing automatic connections to ad hoc wireless networks as a security hole prior to Vista so I am not surprised that you can no longer create automatic connections to ad hoc wireless networks. I can understand that this is probably very annoying to the large number of users who did not regard automatic ad hoc wireless connections as a security hole.
Using a wireless router as a wireless access point is one option. You can connect both your notebook and your printer to the same wireless network and then add the printer as a network printer. If you do not like that option you could use the Vista task scheduler to automate connecting to the ad hoc wireless network but it would be more secure to use a wireless access point and WPA 2 to protect your wireless network.
Look up using netsh to connect to wireless networks. You will need to save a wireless network profile (an xml file containing the network configuration) for the ad hoc wirelss network. Then you need to create a task in the task scheduler to run netsh.exe with the command line "wlan connect name=profilename" whenever you login. Creating a wireless network profile and connecting to a network using a specified profile has decent help in netsh. The task scheduler UI is a common wizard type setup but if you need help you can just do a web search.
Make sure to use WPA2 as otherwise you will be sharing you printer with anyone within range of you wireless network as well as opening up your computer to possible attack.
