I was wanting to create an ad-hoc network on a Windows 8 system, but discovered the “Create an ad hoc network” feature available on prior Windows OS systems is not available on Windows 8.  However, I found in Window 8 you can use the Network Shell (netsh) utility to create a virtual wireless network (WLAN).

  1. First you need to verify your network interface supports virtualization.  Open a command prompt (with administrative privileges) and run “netsh wlan show drivers” – look to see if “Hosted network supported” is “Yes”
  2. Enter the following command to configure the wireless network “netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=<name> key=<password>
  3. Now start the hosted network by running “netsh wlan start hostednetwork”