Cannot tether Epic 4g (on MetroPCS) to my laptop

[epicproblems]

I bought an Epic 4g slider on Craigslist that had a bad Sprint ESN. I took it to a local MetroPCS shop and the guy flashed it to work on Metro. He also enabled 3g data, so I have internet capability on the phone.

The problem I am having is that I need to tether the phone to my computer so I can use the phone internet connection on my laptop. But, no matter what method I use, I cannot get a page to successfully load on my computer. The tether process works, but no page will load. I have tried this using the built-in tether option on the Epic, PDA Net and a wireless tether app called Open Garden WiFi Tether.

I am suspicious that the issue lies in the Epic drivers I have installed on my laptop. I have installed/uninstalled/reinstalled the drivers multiple times and it always seems to hang when installing the "SAMSUNG Android USB Modem." This being said, they DO appear to be properly installed in Device Manager. No exclamation marks, yellow flags or whatever. However, still no data connection on the computer when tethered to the phone. When I click a bookmark, the browser simply displays a white blank page. I also noticed when using PDA Net that when I clicked a link, there was very little actual data being transferred, on the order of a few kilobytes, then nothing.

I think that either the drivers are not properly installed or the Metro guy screwed up enabling 3g data and this is causing the page loading problems. As I said, I can successfully get the devices tethered, but then I can't actually get any websites to load on the laptop. Should I uninstall these drivers yet again and try to clean up the computer before trying again?

Could the fact that the phone has been flashed to Metro PCS have anything to do with the USB drivers not wanting to properly install on my computer? Are the drivers written specifically for Sprint and won't work properly on a flashed phone?

I'm hoping some of you more experienced users can help me diagnose this problem and hopefully resolve it. I really need to be able to use my phone data connection on my laptop.

Thanks!

 

[Paul627g]

Try Wireless Tether from the Market? Of course you do need to be rooted for this option to work.

 

[Kikoshi]

Try Wireless Tether from the Market? Of course you do need to be rooted for this option to work.

Paul i believe that for the flashing to another network to happen, he needed to be rooted prior to the flash, right?

 

[Paul627g]

Paul i believe that for the flashing to another network to happen, he needed to be rooted prior to the flash, right?

Not really sure.. Just throwing out a suggestion...

Many people have heard of PDAnet and others since they are computer based apps too but Wireless Tether is sometimes over looked.


Ahh heck I'm just an adviser.... I can't fix everything but I try.. LOL...

 

[epicproblems]

I have tried wireless tether along with the three apps I listed... Open Garden is a wireless only tethering app. I'm fairly certain that this is NOT an application error issue. Every application acts exactly the same, whether tethering via wireless or USB. They successfully tether, then no pages load and all I see is a blank screen.

Prior to buying/flashing the Epic, I used a Google G1 (HTC) with PDA Net with no issues whatsoever on this computer.

The problem lies within the phone, of that I am convinced. My next step is to flash a new custom ROM to see if perhaps that helps. If not, I'll be taking it back to Metro PCS to have the guy who flashed it diagnose it.

Can I install a ROM based on Froyo on a phone with Gingerbread? Specifically I was thinking Epic Experience 2.0.8 because I can't find a custom ROM based on Gingerbread. Scratch that, found Thunderhawk v1.2

Any other suggestions?