My google foo is failing – though I have a funny feeling this might be one even the STW forum fails on

Trying to connect my new (to me) Sony Z1c to my Windows 7 PC via WiFi using the Wireless Media Transfer protocol it comes with, which is a UPnP thing (is this just a Sony thing, as all the hits I’m getting are Sony, or is it just called something else with other phones?) I’d successfully paired it, but it was failing to connect – I’d searched and found lots of people with similar problems and all the network settings I could find seemed to be right.

So wondering whether it could be a problem with my router, I thought I might as well try bypassing my normal WiFi and connecting direct to the PC by setting up an AP using the Intel My Wifi thing on the PC. Which is where it gets strange – I enabled Intel My Wifi on the PC, and was going to the Wifi settings on the phone to change network when I found that it had already connected to the PC. When I disabled Intel My Wifi it disconnected the phone.

Bear in mind here that I haven’t changed WiFi network on the phone or PC – the My Wifi AP is on, but there’s nothing connected to it, they’re both still on my normal home WiFi network. So what other settings get changed when I enable My Wifi? I’m wondering whether I can just enable that so I don’t have to leave the AP on.

There is a good chance the intel my wifi thing supports the random protocol that Sony are using or even just turns on UPnP and opens the ports on your PC where as your standard drivers don’t.

Thanks for the reply – I wondered if I’d get any. I think the latter, that it’s turning on the UPnP (I don’t think there’s anything funny about the protocol, it’s supposed to just work), or possibly even that having it installed turns that off until it’s enabled, when otherwise it would just always be on. I wish I could find the setting to do that, rather than having to have the AP on and remembering to turn it off – I’m sure it’s secure enough with a long random password and no beacon, but it’s still got to be eating some battery.

aracer, I’ve had a Z1c and now have the Z5 version. Are you windows tethering? or using the Media server option (DNLA)? I can’t remember how the Z1 looked now, but the Z5 has the option for Media server which automatically connects over WiFi and will find the available devices. I’ve just done it and it connected to my TV. That said i cant get the PC to do it without it connecting via bluetooth first…

probably doesn’t help much, but i just learned something new 🙂

You could compare all the hardware settings under the properties of the devices in the system manager and see if there are any differences?

Also try updating to the latest driver from your network card provider as opposed to the built in Windows ones, that may give you more control over services.

Alternatively check you have your network card set to discover other devices on the network and the firewall turned off on that interface.

An update in case anybody is interested. It then stopped working even with My Wifi turned on. But it was only just now when I tried to scan something and the scanner couldn’t connect to the PC either that I tried what I probably should have done in the first place. I turned the router off and back on again and now everything is working 😳