Motorola Moto G (Android) Tether Driver for Windows XP

Wow, here I am dealing with drivers for XP again. You’d almost think this operating system were ancient or something.

(These instructions were written specifically for the MOTO G and the link to the included driver is for the MOTO G; however, the basic instructions should work for creating a driver for a different Android device)

Got a new MOTO G phone a few weeks ago. Started playing around with allowing my laptop to use the cell phone as a wireless connection. When I tried to turn on USB Tethering, my XP laptop needed a driver for an RDNIS device.

Went searching the web and found a generic driver called tetherxp.inf. I believe I found the original file I patched here:

http://code.google.com/p/gaosp/downloads/detail?name=tetherxp.inf

I followed the normal procedure to install a driver from a specific location, but would get Cannot Install this Hardware.

The problem is this driver doesn’t know about the Moto G and needs a little massaging.

Plug your phone into your computer, enable tethering, and you should get the Found New Hardware window. Go to the device manager and in Other Devices you will see the RNDIS driver with a question mark before it.

Right click on the RNDIS device, select properties, click on the Details tab, and select Device Instance Id.  In this window you should see something very close to, if not exactly, this:

USB\VID_22B8_PID_2E24&MI_00\7&58CBAF&0&0000

This is the device info for the Moto G and this needs to be in the INF file for Windows to know the driver matches the hardware.

If your Moto G matches the device ID above, you can use this version of the INF file that I modified and works on my phone:

http://www.xyfyx.com/files/tetherxp.zip

Note: Use this at your own risk – I am not responsible for any problems it may cause. Also, I can’t guarantee the file will be available long-term, so if the link above is dead, you’ll have to build the patch yourself.

If your device ID doesn’t match or the link above is dead, here is how to fix the original tetherxp.zip file.

Open the tether.inf file with notepad. Go to the section labeled

[AndroidDevices.NT.5.1]

Copy one of the existing lines such as:

; Motorola Sholes with adb
%AndroidDevice%    = RNDIS.NT.5.1, USB\VID_22B8&PID_41E5

Fix up the comment. Then change the VID and PID to match the value of the device instance id of your phone. Further, if you phone has the &MI_ parameter, you MUST include it as well. Don’t include anything from the next \ on. When I modify the new lines for my phone, they look like this:

; Motorola Moto G 
%AndroidDevice%    = RNDIS.NT.5.1, USB\VID_22B8&PID_2E24&MI_00

Save the file, then update the driver from a specified location again, using this modified INF file.

Works for me. Hopefully it works for you.

Please feel free to include comments if you have to make any changes others might find useful – I don’t plan to revisit this topic myself. I’m surprised how many people have looked at my driver tweaks.