Wireless Network Card BIOS Whitelist

[Y0lin]

I would like to upgrade my wireless network card. I would like to know if my particular notebook model has a BIOS whitelist that would prevent me from installing a card that's not on the list.

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

HP has never published a definitive list but by monitoring posts here from people like you and success and failure stories and our own experiments with our own HP machines it has been determined that HP abandoned the whitelist sometime in Q42013. Models with 4th gen Intel Core processors like yours are generally safe. I am about 95% sure you have no whitelist issues. 

See p. 86 of the Manual here:

Manual

Just about the time HP abandoned the whitelist, however, they began selling laptops strung with a single wireless antenna cable. While the laptop no longer is blocked from booting with a non-HP card, the absence of a second antenna effectively prevents use of any very good wireless card, making upgrade efforts futile. The only way to know for sure if you have 1 or 2 antennae is to open it up. Models with the 802.11 b/g/n "low-end" wifi cards tend to have a single antenna. It is theoretically possible to add a second antenna lead but very difficult to do. 

Don't shoot the messenger. Not my design, but this is the straight story. 

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