Windows 10 Ad Hoc Network With Dual Wireless Nics

Microsoft has apparently made a task that was relatively simple in Windows 7 infinitely more complex in Windows 10--creating an ad hoc wireless network. This is something I was able to do in Windows 7 without issue and it was very useful for bridging for the purpose of sniffing wireless traffic while troubleshooting.

I have a laptop with two wireless NICs--one is on-board and the other is a USB NIC. In Windows 7, I would connect to my wireless network with NIC#1, host the ad hoc network on NIC#2, and then share internet access (bridge). On the device I needed to capture traffic for (such as an iPad), I would connect that to the ad hoc wireless network hosted on the laptop's NIC#2. On the laptop, I could then use Wireshark to sniff the traffic from the iPad on NIC#2. All this could easily be done on Windows 7 through the GUI.

Now add Windows 10 to the laptop. The only way that I have been able to determine to create an ad hoc wireless network on the Windows 10 platform is by using NETSH commands. Specifically...

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=SniffNet key=abcd1234
netsh wlan start hostednetwork

The problem with this solution is that it embeds the ad hoc network as a virtual NIC inside wireless NIC#1, which is already connected to the "real" wireless network. I cannot find a way to tell Windows 10 to NOT embed the ad hoc network as a virtual NIC inside of NIC#1 and, instead, to use NIC#2 without (or even with) a virtual NIC. While the ad hoc wireless is up and running, an IPCONFIG will show only the IP address assigned to NIC#1 and not the virtual NIC. Neither does Wireshark recognize the embedded virtual NIC as an adapter available for sniffing traffic.

Anyone have any ideas on a way around this? Thanks in advance!

 

My workaround on this was to create a Linux Mint bootable flash drive, install Wireshark, and then create an ad hoc network there. It's not often that I need a hotspot for the purposes of troubleshooting, so I don't have a problem booting to a flash drive on the rare occasions that I need to do this. It still saddens me that I have to go to an operating system outside of Windows 10 to do this, though. If anyone has any other ideas, I'd love to hear them. For now, I'm considering my issue resolved. Thanks!