I'm not rooted on this phone,but,on the HUAWEI ASCEND, I used BARNACLE WI-FI TETHER w/no problems. Only thing I had to do in the settings was check the box 'SKIP WPA SUPPLICANT' & it worked every time.
EDIT:
Let me go on to state that tethering w/o purchasing the add-on SPRINT tethering/hotspot option is frowned upon by SPRINT.
I honestly forgot about this momentarily during my original post,as I was on CRICKET for many years, and they couldn't care less how you use your data,as they will just throttle you after using 1GB of 3G data during your billing cycle.