Windows – How to set up a Windows 7 laptop as a bluetooth access point

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I have a laptop with Windows 7 and with a good bluetooth interface, and with a very bad (and overloaded) wifi device.

My laptop is connected to the network through a simple, IP-based home network cable. This is what I want to share with bluetooth to other, bluetooth capable devices (mobile phones, other laptops, etc).

Thus, what I want, that other devices could use the network of my Windows 7 laptop, using it as a bluetooth access point.

Is it somehow possible? My bluetooth is pretty good configured (I can move files, I can connect to bluetooth networks, etc), but I can't see any option to make a bluetooth network access point.

What I essentially want, is similar to the netsh start wlan hostednetwork trick in the case of wifi, but this time with bluetooth. Of course, any gui-based or command line solution, even with non-standard software would be okay.

Is it somehow possible?

What I don't want:

  • I don't want to use wifi. Answers suggesting to use wifi are unacceptable.
  • I don't want to connect my Windows 7 laptop to a bluetooth "access point", I want my Windows 7 laptop to be the "access point". Thus, questions suggesting to connect my laptop as a client device to a bluetooth network, are also not acceptable.

Best Answer

The reason you do not succeed with creating a Personal area network over Bluetooth is because you are using the Microsoft Bluetooth stack. Using this stack, it is not possible to use Internet Connection Sharing (ICS). This was possible in older versions of Windows, but is no longer the case.

I quote from one analysis of the problem :

The problem isn't a new one (introduced in vista and still present in windows 7) - instead, the problem already existed in windows xp!

The Microsoft Bluetooth stack does not treat a bluetooth adapter like a LAN adapter. Period.

It is, however, a matter of the vendor supplied bluetooth software (as an alternative to just using the Microsoft stack).

So when I used Windows XP (and windows 2000, by the way) I could use the bluetooth software provided by AVM (vendor of Bluefritz USB) - which gave me a PAN connection and a bluetooth connection treated just like any other network adapter! Thus enabling ICS and/or bridging my LAN an my bluetooth adapters!

Since the only available AVM drivers, however, dropped PAN support in their vista drivers and tell you to switch to Microsoft Bluetooth (on the fly) if you would like to use the PAN profile, you are left with the Microsoft stack which doesn't support ICS and/or bridging with bluetooth connections! And this has already been this way in Windows XP!

I can still use the AVM bluetooth software in windows 7, but if I want to use a PAN connection, I now MUST switch the bluetooth stack on the fly (from AVM to Microsoft)! And voilà - no more ICS in that PAN connection!

But to all other people who may have issues with Internet connection sharing over bluetooth (be it since Vista, Windows 7 or whatever):

There is hope.

Third-party software DOES enable you to have ICS via Bluetooth!!

I tested several Bluetooth stacks:

  1. Toshiba BT stack
  2. Bluesoleil by IVT
  3. Widcomm/Broadcomm

In each case, I had ICS working via Bluetooth!

Instructions on using the BlueSoleil software for establishing WiFi-over-Bluetooth can be found in the article Sharing Internet Access using Bluetooth device. I have not tested them, since I don't have the required environment, but they seem mostly logical.

You may get the BlueSoleil stack from here. This is a demo version that limits file transfers to 5 MB per file, which is fine for your purpose.

Follow the instructions as best as you can. They were obviously not written for Windows 7, and the writer was not English, but the many screenshots should help where the text is unclear. However, not having tested the details, I cannot guarantee that this will work.

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