Wireless card for HP Compaq Presario CQ57

[flj0yter0p]

Hello, I've got a Presario CQ57 and the wireless doesn't seem to work. The light that is on the f12 key is always orange and no matter how many times I press it, it never changes the colour. I figured it may be the fn keys are not working but the rest of them such as for volume control appear to be working just fine so that's probably not the issue. The little icon on the taskbar is not the signal bars but the monitor one as if I've got a cable connected and when I click on it, it pops up and says Wireless networks available but never lists any of the networks. I did a clean install of Windows 7 on it and tried installing all of the wireless drivers for this model available here but no results. In Device Manager, it doesn't display any wireless adapter in the network category, neither is there anything with an X or exclamation mark. I also live booted a Linux distro to see if it's Windows related but on there it shows an X symbol as if there's no wireless module installed at all so at this point I think it may be a hardware issue. I have 2 cards laying around from other notebooks which I inserted but upon boot it displays a message that it's incompatible and refuses to proceed into booting the OS.

Unfortunately I could not find an original HP spare in my country and my last resort is to purchase one from AliExpress. The module in question is Ralink RT5390 and the ones that I find on there all have identical letters and numbers on the chip except for the MAC address. I'm worried that it may end up displaying that incompability message but if it's the same model it should probably work just fine?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

The notebook has a BIOS whitelist which blocks the installation of any other model Wi-Fi card from working than the one that came with your notebook.

You will have to open up the notebook and get the same card with the part number on the white 'Replace with HP spare' label.

Your other option and probably the better of the two options, would be to use a dual band USB Wi-Fi adapter.

[flj0yter0p]

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately none of the cards offered there have the sticker attached with the HP spare and P/N however the rest of the information on the board and chip seems to match. If there is still a chance the notebook may refuse it then I guess a USB adapter would be safer. 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome. 

If the SPS number on any of the Ralink cards you have are the same as the one your notebook came with, it should work. 

If not,  most likely they won't.