Update: 7th December 2022

Today I managed to narrow down the issues to Intel driver specific. AX201 Wi-Fi module driver 22.160 and above breaks the mobile hotspot on both Windows 10 & Windows 11. The only possible solution is to rollback to driver version 22.150.x.x & stay there until Intel identifies and fixes this issue. I have opened a thread with Intel and the representative is investigating this issue. If you are interested, follow the thread here

We’ve poor cellular coverage by the datacenter area from the service provider & most of the times I use my work laptop as Mobile hotspot & it did work. Well, minimum until recent days.

I started seeing my mobile phone showing “Connected without internet” once in few minutes times & I had to reconnect which was a recent development. Unfortunately, I couldn’t land upon any relevant solutions after spending almost two working days searching for solutions & executing my own logic with resetting network/Winsock etcetera.

As I use Samsung Galaxy A71 5G Android phone, I thought of giving another attempt by searching for “Galaxy a71 5g connected without internet” & one of the first search results was:

Here, the vlogger talks about “Randomized MAC” Galaxy phones use when connecting to Wi-Fi networks. Although the vlogger suggests Static IP address & other changes to resolve this issue, I only changed the connection property from “Random MAC” to “Phone MAC” & days long frustrations were over.

I wanted to figure out why all of a sudden this issue started. I remember using the Mobile Hotspot without any issues, had a PowerShell script to start the mobile hotspot startup automatically whenever I am connected to work network for months & couldn’t just give up because I found a solution. Hence, I continued to find more answers.

There were more videos discussing the same issue about Samsung Galaxy phones & subsequently I landed on a Samsung community discussion here

My mobile is paired over Bluetooth to my laptop & it connects every time laptop restarts. One of the initial settings I checked was to ensure Mobile Hotspot was not setup for 2.4GHz, that causes issues for Bluetooth which uses 2.4GHz by default.

In my case, at work I am not connected to Wi-Fi networks & mobile hotspot is configured to share internet from my domain network connection. By default, as the 5GHz is not consumed by Wi-Fi connections, mobile hotspot utilizes that frequency and leaves a notification, asking to switch the frequency if devices fail to connect.

Hence, it could be one of the many elements as discussed in the Samsung community thread. All you need is to try and find out one that suits your situation. Regardless, if it is a Samsung Galaxy phone, the first solution you could try is to setup Phone MAC instead of Randomized MAC for the specific Wi-Fi connection that you have issues with. If that didn’t resolve, try others.