Hijacking your laptop’s wireless connection with XBOX 360
January 23, 2007
So I got Xbox 360 last weekend on the day that I was supposed to house sit for my lovely friends Nancy and Richard. It was perfect since they have a 60-inch plus HDTV in the entertainment room. Sweet… I could envision hours of punch drunk game playing. It was all set up and working great but I wanted to connect to Xbox Live… get it online and see what I could download or play Gears of War with some online players. The Xbox ships with an ethernet jack and wire but the router was all the way up in the bedroom (which is a silly place to have it, if you ask me, Nancy… but I digress.) (Note: To save yourself the trouble, just pickup the Xbox Wireless Network Adaptor from your local Best Buy or gaming store.) Luckily, my laptop is always with me and they do have a nice wireless setup with some Apple Airports around the house. There must be a way to use my laptop’s wireless signal to get my Xbox online.
Indeed, there is. It’s really quite simple and I’ll give you instructions on how to do it.
First things first…
- Connect to a wireless network – Connect to a wireless network and make sure you can access the internet. If you have trouble with this step, you’ve got bigger fish to fry and should at least check out troubleshooting your wireless network.
- Hookup your laptop to your Xbox 360 – With your laptop powered up and connected to a wireless network, connect your laptop to your Xbox 360 by an ethernet cable (standard internet wire seen coming out of your router.) One end should plugin to your xbox and the other into your ethernet port on the laptop where you’d normally hook up your ethernet wire.
For Windows XP users:
- Make sure you are logged in as a computer Administrator.
- Go to the Control Panel (click Start, click Control Panel).
- Double-click on Network Connections
- Right-click your Wireless Network Connection adaptor and click Properties
- Click on the Advanced tab, then check Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s Internet connection.
- Click OK
- And finally…Turn on your XBox and connect to XBox Live.
For Mac OS X users:
- Click on the System Preferences icon in the Dock.
- Select the Sharing preference pane.
- Click on the Internet tab.
- Start Internet Sharing. (Note: Make sure that you are sharing from your wireless connection to computers using built-in ethernet).
- And finally…Turn on your XBox and connect to XBox Live.
I did this and it worked fine, but I could not download anything from XBOX live marketplace. Is there anything else I need to do?
I did this and it worked fine to get connected to xbox live, but I could not download anything from XBOX live marketplace. Is there anything else I need to do?
What was the error you got on Marketplace? Its possible that your wireless connection to your laptop is weak or spotty and there are too many packets being lost while transferring data from marketplace, but if thats true ythe your xbox live service will be sluggish as well. Give me a little more info or try calling xbox support, of course.
It’s a lot more complicated than that. with simply bridging the connection, your xbox 360 will be limited to strict or moderate, thus restricting connection to a lot of xbox live content. you will need to manually configure the xbox ip and gateway to allow a open nat connection.
every time i do this mine cant find my ip adress??
would like to know what is the best/cheapest way to connect the xbox 360/TV from my laptop using an air card.
thank john
try enabling a firewall
For Windows XP Users: windows firewall
For Mac: if theres one built in Mac Os x use it otherwise download one from download.com i had the same probleam and this fixed it hope it helps you too.
I have a laptop with windows Vista home basic
and ive looked everywere to find out how to do it on vista
could you help me out
Thanks
Nice,
is there any way to connect a wireless broadband card (Sprint) instead? I’ll save you the hassle on what I tried…
1. Bridging does not work (it recognizes the pcmcia card as a dial up and won’t let it bridge)
2. Sharing it shows a “wired” network adaptor, but fails on the IP Address.
Any suggestions?
how will i be able to connect my xbox through my laptop as i am using windows vista
any help?
what the hell is dns?anyways it says dns failed and i cant figure out what it is
it works fine on mine i also have a 3g broadband air card through at@t. if you receive no ip address while testing your connection it’s because under advanced controls under your air card settings it’s not set up as local area network
Hey i got mine to confirm the IP address but the DNS is failing every time what do i do?
thanks dude, works perfectly for me!
im with JUJ ive tried this too but it doesnt find the IP.. I see people talking about switching the IP and subnet but how do you do it?
Didn’t work for me. I am going to try Nav’s suggestion and hopefully the following website will work. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909536/en-us?sd=xbox
If not I am not sure what else to try!
Thanks Keenu
Will this work using a macbook and verizon broadband card!! don’t have the card yet but want to know first
Thanks for the info. I am running Win XP but I am getting errors stating that the Xbox 360 cannot find the IP Address. The laptop does have Internet connection.
I’ve seen this method in a few different places and I can’t pull up an “advanced tab.” I’m running on vista. where can i change this?
hi,
i have wireless at home, but i am not an administrator… i have my own laptop with the usb wireless connection…
could i still use the ethernet cable to connect to xbox live? if so, how?
thanks
When I click on ‘Allow other computers to access the internet through this computer’s internet connection’ on the properties of my wireless connection it comes up with an error. The error says ‘Internet sharing cannot be enabled. A LAN connection is already configured with the IP address that is required for automatic IP addressing’. Are any of you guys able to explain a way around this?
p.s. I’m using xp and have the ethernet cable connected to a 360 60gb.
Thanks,
Nick
what if have vista
I got exactly the same problem as PS does. He fails on the IP Address, I can’t solve the problem and i’ve been searching over google 2 hours but I still don’t know how to solve it! Any suggestions?