Old Bios Whitelisting current wifi card for HP Notebook - 15-ac158dx (ENERGY STAR)

[David-A-68]

I came upon an old HP Notebook and decided to give it new life.  I upgraded the ram to 16 GB and installed a new 1TB SSD.  To make it more speedy I put Linux Mint on it.  And, yes indeed its super snappy.  The old wifi doggs, so I went to upgrade it to an Intel AX200 (wifi6 yada yada).  BUT... it wasn't even surfacing in the device listing.  I swapped to the old one, it works but suuuper slow (expected), then I swapped back to the new one and it wasn't recognized again. 

After consulting the ChatGPT oracle, we determined that it could by a bios whitelisting problem (it's currently Insyde F.1E).  But... HP doesn't list any downloads or updates in the product page. 

Is there a place where I can download the bios update (I have a separate windows tower that I can create a USB with).  I'd love to know if there are archives of these bios updaters, where to get it if it exists, and/or whether my wifi card is whitelisted in the updated bios -- or should I just consider it too old and get a wifi dongle for it (sad... but will if necessary)

Thanks!

Dave

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi, Dave:

Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do to get around the BIOS whitelist and updating the BIOS won't fix that.

Below is the link to the last BIOS update HP released for the model series (F.29):

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp96501-97000/sp96831.exe

There is one model dual band card folks have gotten to work in the 15-ac1xx model series and that is this one:

Realtek RTL8821CE 802.11 ac 1×1 Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 4.2 Combo Adapter (MU-MIMO supported)   HP part # L17365-005.

The card works with one antenna wire, but I don't know if it has driver support for Linux.

You should be able to find one of these cards on eBay.

Watch these videos for how to make a USB BIOS recovery drive so you can update the BIOS outside of Windows.

You will need to use another Windows PC to make the USB BIOS recovery drive with.

How to make and use the BIOS recovery flash drive to recover or update the BIOS outside of Windows.

Creating a BIOS Recovery Flash Drive for HP Notebooks | HP Notebooks | HP Support

How to recover/update your notebook's BIOS with the USB recovery drive:

Restore the BIOS with a Recovery Flash Drive on HP Notebooks | HP Notebooks | HP Support

[David-A-68]

Thanks Paul!  I've successfully updated the UEFI on my HP... and, you're right (as I'm sure you already knew).  The Wifi card was not enumerated (bwah bwah).  But hey... my UEFI is updated to F.29 - so there's that! 

I did some research (e'hem "deep research" with ChatGPT), and it assured me that Linux has kernel-level driver support for the RTL818821CE you specified, however since the card is so old, I've only found literally one source for it from China and the picture doesn't match the description and the price is more than a wifi dongle - so... I think the path is clear we've updated this laptop as best we can at this point.

I think we're good in closing this out. 

Thanks so much for your help!!!

- David