Update WiFi card HP with "Whitelist"

[JohnSmith99]

I have an old HP Compaq CQ 45, I think it's from 2012/2013. It comes with an Atheros AR5B125 Mini PCIe, what is the most "powerful" Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card I can put on it?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

I'm looking at the service manual for the CQ45 model series and I see processors that are from a much older time period.

c01597758.pdf (hp.com)

Look at the 4th character of your notebook's serial number.

That will be the year of manufacture.

If it is a '9,' '0,' or '1' the notebook has a BIOS whitelist, and you can't install any other model Wi-Fi adapter.

No cards were offered in the model series that support Bluetooth because on those old notebooks, a separate Bluetooth module was used.

See chapter 3 of the service manual for the list of Wi-Fi cards that were offered in the model series and the separate Bluetooth module.

There is almost a 100% chance that none of those cards will work in your notebook due to the whitelist.

I recommend that you purchase a USB dual band Wi-Fi/Bluetooth adapter.

I have this one for example and it works great: It is also very small and hardly sticks out of the USB port.

Amazon.com: USB WiFi Bluetooth Adapter, 600Mbps Dual Band 2.4/5GHz Wireless Network Card, USB WiFi D...

[erico]

Given the generation that your laptop is from and the WIFI antenna setup it has, you would get better results from using a USB WIFI dongle instead of opening up your laptop and replacing the PCIe WIFI module.

Your USB ports are most likely 2.0, which means  a maximum theoretical data throughput of 480 Mbit/s.

I am not aware of a 1X1 PCIe network card that has more data throughput than 150 Mbits/s.

USB WIF dongles on the other hand have built in antennas. They use the USB 2.0 bandwidth to actually increase the WiFi bandwidth to more than double the throughput you are getting now. The prices of the USB WiFi dongles are highly competetive

A USG WIFI dongle can actually give you access to all of the  old and newer generation WiFi bands, such as 802.11 AC/ AX/B/G/N.

You can't get an upgrade like that with a replacement module for your Atheros AR5B125 PCIe module.

Online Vendor sources at Amazon.com

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=usb+wifi+dongle+for+laptop&crid=24KMI5I6Z6JYA&sprefix=usb+wifi+dongle+for...