Samsung Galaxy S2 - Tether Problem - help pls

longtimelurker54

Hi all,

Many thanks for the latest suggestion re Kies. I feel driven to drink and am going to have a couple of semi-celebratory glasses of wine after a hugely frustrating day with this. Yes I do mean virtually the entire day!!

I downloaded Kies. All worked fine on the Desktop. I can now TETHER with USB on that most of the time. Can't check WiFi as desktop doesnt have it.

The laptop has been a nightmare. Downloaded Kies on to it. At first it worked fine to tether. Then it stopped working completely. Kept giving me messages that the hardware device had not been installed properly. Unplugged the cable but kept getting following message on phone:

"PC connection only available in idle. Close all applications".

I checked and no other applications were running. Had a quick google and found a few other people experiencing the same problem. The "tether USB" option on the phone is greyed out and you cannot select it at all. Others suggested putting the phone in and out of flight mode to clear. This still wouldn't work.

In the end I uninstalled and then reinstalled Kies to the laptop. It immediately prompted me to download a "firmware upgrade", so I went with that. It took half the afternoon..... boy do you need patience!!

FINALLY, I can now TETHER with the USB cable on the laptop (for now anyway...), so huge thanks for helping me to get this far!!

But it still point blank REFUSES to allow me to set up a portable hotspot and link by wifi. The laptop finds the phone hotspot and will connect to it and tell me I am connected but I still can't open any browsers (Firefox of IE). Again I've googled and found others reporting the same problem but I haven't found the answer to it yet so if anyone has any suggestions I'd be really grateful. Just can't understand why it won't work.

It's a Dell Inspiron laptop running Windows XP. It's a few years old but has no trouble linking to wifi hotspots or connecting to the internet using broadband dongles etc. Just seemingly not with my phone wifi!

Also the firmware upgrade seems to have made the phone quite a bit slower .... oh joy! I'm beginning to wish I'd stayed with my old trusty brick of a mobile, so simple and no hassles!

Off to drink wine now....will check back later to see if anyone has any more ideas I could try to get this working. Came really close to wanting to throw the phone somewhere today!

Thx in advance.

S0litaire

Have you thought of using a custom ROM on your phone! ^_~ lol
It's just as much hassle as getting tethering to work.
But at the end of it you get a nice, faster phone, where everything should work properly!! lol

Read the "General" and "Q&A" forums here! http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1055

JJ_Egan

Custom rom will do nothing for USB connection or tethering.

Note SGS2 and Kies do not like non motherboard USB connections .
Likewise they do not like Laptops USB connections presumably this is all to do with USB power output .


jje

longtimelurker54

Hi

Thanks for the additional replies. No idea what a custom ROM is, sorry! Am not very technical.

Re the USB ports, I tried various of them as I read online about the back ports on laptops etc., being better/more compatible. It seems to make little difference.

The USB tethering will sometimes work, sometimes not. Keep coming up with "MTP application" where the phone tries to link to KIES. Otherwise, the error message about PC connection not possible.

Through googling I found a long thread on the Vodafone forum where it seems there are lots of others having the same problem so there is a problem with the phone it seems. See here:
http://vfaus.lithium.com/t5/iPhone-and-Android/Vodafone-Samsung-Galaxy-S2-Wifi-hotspot-tethering-not-working/td-p/18473/page/9

Don't know what to do about it though as recently signed up to a 24 month contract with Three and I've heard Three are very poor at customer service.

During my 2 hour stint with their technical people on Sunday one of their suggestions was sending the phone off for inspection. Would I be within my rights to ask for a replacement rather than having to have my own phone sent off and be without it for days/weeks?

I specifically chose this phone as the plan was to do away with the need for other internet bills so if it can't tether it's not going to meet that need.

Another family member ordered the same phone at the same time and hers is working perfectly tethering and WiFi, so I just don't understand what the problem can be.

The problem with USB tethering is also that it keeps charging the phone fully and telling you to remove the cable, which you can't do if you're trying to use it for an internet connection! So am also worried about this.

Since my last post when USB tethering refused to work again I went ahead and did a factory reset but this has made not a jot of difference.

If anyone knows a way to fix this or has any advice I'd be very grateful.

scooby75

I had the same problem initially but it was apparently problem with the laptop's modem. I had to get a firmware update for it and that sorted the problem out.

Your computer may also be having problems if you are switching between one internet connection and another. Are you using tethering as well as another connection at different times?

Whatever you do, make sure you get rid of Kies - it's useless as far as I can tell (and most Samsung users seem to agree).

Yolina

scooby75 wrote: »

Whatever you do, make sure you get rid of Kies - it's useless as far as I can tell (and most Samsung users seem to agree).

I'll give you that Kies is mostly a piece of c**p however its only redeeming feature is that it syncs well with Outlook which is pretty much the only thing I use it for - my contacts obviously get synced to my Google account but I also like to keep them in Outlook too. The other thing it's good for are the drivers that are installed with it (though I'm sure they can be found on the net without having to install Kies) which means that Odin can be used to flash firmware