104 unsupported wireless network device detected.

[bci24]

Hello. I have a problem with the wifi card.

I own a CQ61-125EQ notebook. I cahanged my wifi card Atheros AR5007 with a Broadcom BCM94322MC. When starting the notebook i get this error:

104 unupported wireless network device detected. system halted. remove device and restart 

I can't get to boot from anything.

I have made a google search and i find that it's a BIOS problem. I have the latest bios F.23.

Can someone please help me to solve this problem?

[Sir-Kain]

Hi,

i have a question...

Are you sure, that now wifi card will be working with this notebook?

In my opinion, not every wifi card works with hp products

You could of course try to restore Bios DEFAULTS 😉

[bci24]

i try to restore the bios to default, but no luck. This card is working on other laptop not hp, but i have heard that hp is restricting some cards (on other laptop - not hp - i can install any wifi card - the important thing is to be on mini-pcie).

I don't get why HP don't let us to use any wifi product that use mini pcie.

[Sir-Kain]

i heard it too

probably is some sort of "white-list" -> list of dedicated parts to use

Sadly, i don`t know why HP products don`t support every devices...

[DavidPK]

Hi,

Sir-Kain is absolutely correct - there is a whitelist of allowed WLAN cards on the Bios.  Any card not on this list will throw out the error you are seeing.  There are reasons that this 'Whitelist' is implemented, but in my opinion, none of them seem that reasonable - however, the fact that is does exist will limit you to using the WLAN cards listed on Page 57 of your Maintenance & Service Guide.

Regards,

DP-K

[bci24]

ok, i see the white list, like i said in this post

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Operating-systems-and/Unsupported-Wireless-Network-Device-Dete...

If i can pass the bios check the wifi will work. (I have unplug the wifi card, power the pc and when the bootloader is show - GRUB - i plug the wifi card then boot into Windows 7 and everythink is working fine. The card is recognized and working well.

I need this card for may Mac OS which is installed too on this laptop. This card is fully recognized. The Atheros AR5007 will not work on OS X.

I found a solution that for others it works ( that message was gone). I think i will try it also this solution:

First off if you don't have linux installed you will need to go to www.knoppix.org and download KNOPPIX_V3.8.2-2005-05-05-EN.iso, then burn the cd

You need to have the card install during the boot sequence so, have your laptop open and bootup, when you see the boot:_ line insert the card then press enter. Knoppix will autodetect the card & the bios wont complain.

Once knoppix has booted:

Click on the penguin on the taskbar and select "Root Shell", then the following command (from now on any line that begins with a # is a command to be typed at the Root prompt:
#iwconfig
You will get a list of ethernet adapters, eth0, eth1 etc. The wireless one should be quite obvious from the text displayed after it with all the wireless parameters!
#ethtool -e ethX
Obviously replace the 'X' with the index of your wireless card you found above.
You will get a hex dump of the 256 bytes of EEPROM data.
Note: There is nothing dangerous in the above steps at all.

If you want to writing to your EEPROM (You can seriously screw your card up so be careful ):

#mkdir /usr/tmp
#cd /usr/tmp
#wget http://www.geocities.com/sonyirclib/ipw2200.tar.gz
>

N.B. This file has already been patched to allow writing to the eeprom

#tar xvzf ipw2200.tar.gz
#cd ipw2200-1.0.3
#sh unload
#sh load

Now all that you need to do is write to the eeprom. If your card is from Europe:

#ethtool -E eth0 magic 0x2200 offset 0x8 value 0xf6
#ethtool -E eth0 magic 0x2200 offset 0x9 value 0x12
#ethtool -E eth0 magic 0x2200 offset 0xa value 0x3c
#ethtool -E eth0 magic 0x2200 offset 0xb value 0x10

If it is from the US:

ethtool -E eth0 magic 0x2200 offset 0x8 value 0xf5
ethtool -E eth0 magic 0x2200 offset 0x9 value 0x12
ethtool -E eth0 magic 0x2200 offset 0xa value 0x3c
ethtool -E eth0 magic 0x2200 offset 0xb value 0x10

N.B. the -E must be uppercase for writing to work.

Now reboot your computer and you should no longer get the error 104...!

[tannenba]

This didn't work for me.  I have a TP-link n wlan mini pci and it works if plugged in after going thru the bios,

It is a Atheros AR922X family.  Works in Windows 7 and Knoppix, but ethtool says eeprom dump not supported.

Joe

[cyberkeeper1]

you are correct. HP only allows certain Broadcom chips containing the bcm43xx chipset. thats it. been that way since wireless came out. its extremely retarded and unfair, but thats how it is. and by the way, the restriction is NOT a BIOS issue, its programmed into the CMOS by default. there might be a way to get into the CMOS via DOS and disable the bit that controls the restrictions IF that tweak exists. Best of luck to you guys.

[tannenba]

There was a tweak.  A BIOS flash that allows all of them.  Don't remember exactly where it was, found it with google.  Worked fine till the board broke, so went to a Netgear N express card.

[weebill]

Re: 104 unsupported wireless network device detected.