17 February 2010

Problems tethering your iPhone to a laptop?

I bought a Dell Inspiron Mini 1012 the other day - it's a nice netbook replacement for my much travelled eeePC 701. The Windows 7 Starter Edition upgraded nicely to Windows 7 Ultimate in a few minutes.

I have a data plan on my iPhone, and I thought I'd try the standard Bluetooth tether. Although the iPhone & Dell paired successfully, it wasn't quite right. The Dell wanted to install a driver for the iPhone, and it left the phone icon with a yellow exclamation point - it could not find a driver for the Bluetooth Peripheral Device.

The fix:

1. in the "View Devices and Printers", you should see the iPhone (after pairing). Right click on the phone and select "properties".

Click on Services tab.

Uncheck “Wireless iAP” (wireless internet access point).

That's it. If you want to use the iPhone as a modem, make sure tethering is turned on in the iPhone, and Bluetooth is turned on on both iPhone and computer, then right-click on the phone icon in Devices and Printers and select “connect using -> access point”.

You should now have an internet connection! The iPhone will show a blue bar at the top of the screen telling you the amount of data transfer. You can turn off the iPhone screen if you wish and you can keep using the connection.

4 comments:

  1. hey i was wondering what kind of model 1012 you had? i've been looking around for whether or not the 1012 has native bluetooth accessibility and it's been pretty hard to tell

    thoughts?

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  2. Mine definitely has Bluetooth. It's worth noting that although it also has a GSM SIM slot under the battery, there is no actual hardware there for the SIM. Don't put a SIM in there or you'll spend days trying to get it out...

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  3. I have the Australian model, which appears to have Bluetooth across the whole line.
    http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/inspiron-1012?c=au&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19

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  4. yea that's what i feared, it seems as tho US domestic don't have bluetooth intergration yet, but parts of europe and asia do. and now i guess the aussies as well. o'well looks like i'll have to install it myself

    thanks for the help!

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