HP 250 G6 win/ drivers

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Absolutely nuts!

How about in the advanced settings?

Is the transmit power turned off there, and if so, can you turn it on?

Here is a link to typical wifi card advanced settings...

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005585/network-and-i-o/wireless-networki...

[Ian50]

Real big Disaster now !!

"Is the transmit power turned off there, and if so, can you turn it on?"

Yes it was - but throughput booster was disabled, so I enabled it.

A message came up "ACPI enabled. Restart"

So I clicked Restart.

Machine not only did *not* restart, it is now black.

The power button does nothing - I mean nothing. The little power connector LED on LHS rear is on (connected to AC power)

Power light front RHS side is on, the HDD light next to it is semi-on and not blinking.

The DVD drive opens and spins on a disc but nothing else.No screen flicker, no indication of any activity. Just black.

Fortunately I do have this older HP250 in good working shape.

The celeron machine is a Frankensteined paper weight ?

[Ian50]

An answer now to my previous disaster post ...

The machine was in a state of absolute black, nothing moved it, no power buttons, no DVD drive disc, no sign of life apart from the power LED light and some delinquent HDD activity.

So I pulled all the external connections, AC power cord, mouse etc and pulled the battery out for over 20 minutes.

The little front power LED went out (a good sign, the machine had a pulse, anyway) and the little front HDD LED stopped its' deliquency.

Repowering then rebooted with everything as before, including the Throughput Booster back as disabled. Whatever that setting does, it doesn't turn the network adapter on or off but it does disrupt any power save settings you may have.

At this point, I will stay with the state we have. Maybe buy a 3rd party usb3 network adapter *with* Win7 Pro x64 drivers. Until someone can really say why the internal AC3168 wifi adapter is labelled as "power disabled" in Win7 Pro x64, what we now have is ok, and a big boost from when we started this.

Thanks to Paul and the HP forum.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Yikes!

Glad you got it back in action again.

OK...here is what I can derive from this whole mess, and it comes down to what jorkki posted yesterday about the wireless button not working.

I am on my desktop PC, but next to me is my HP 350 G1 notebook running Windows 10.

I can replicate what is happening with the wifi adapter in your notebook by pressing the F12 key to turn on airplane mode.

In this mode the wifi radio is off but the device still shows working properly, etc, in the device manager.

The problem is with W7, there is no airplane mode and normaly the wireless button driver won't install, because you only have airplane mode in W8, 8.1 and W10.

The wireless button hardware has an ID of ACPI\HPQ6001, and you won't find that device needing a driver in W7.

So, for some reason the wireless radio is defaulted to the off position in W7, and on when you install W10.  Everyone that has installed W7 with the Intel 3168 reports that it doesn't work, but with W10, it works just fine.

I don't have any notebooks with W7 running on them anymore.

I think in XP, there was a setting to turn off the wireless radio, but I don't know if there is one in W7.

The only way anyone would be able to get that doggone adapter to work in W7, would be to figure out how to power on the radio in W7, if the F12 key doesn't do it.

By all means, you can try to install the W10 wireless button driver from the 250 G6 support page, but I don't believe it will do a thing, if it even installs.  I will be flabbergasted if it does.

Give it a shot, and let us know the outcome.

[Ian50]

Paul

"Everyone that has installed W7 with the Intel 3168 reports that it doesn't work, but with W10, it works just fine"

Yes, exactly.

So the default airplane mode of "ON" is the issue with the Intel 3168 and Win7 has no method of turning it to "OFF" ... I've often noted that MS' defaults are almost always the exact opposite of what is useful :smileyindifferent:

This final diagnosis is supported by the HP Connection Manager, which has a greyed-out tab on "airplane mode" with a Win7 installation.

Do you have a download link to the W10 wireless button driver to try, please ?

Although it does seem most unlikely, I also have a Win7 Pro x64 HP250 (perhaps 18 months now) and both it and the Celeron HP250 we are discussing have an airplane picture stamped on the F12 keyboard - so maybe Win7 has provision for "airplane mode" but not implemented then.

The HP250 manual for my older machine says in relation to the F12 key:

"Turns the airplane mode and wireless feature on or off.

NOTE:The airplane mode key is also referred to as the wireless button"

That machine came with Win7 Pro x64 already installed. Intel  AC3165.

Failing that, the workaround of a 3rd party external usb3 network adapter is a good resolution. I used an old Win2k/XP installation with a PCMCIA wifi card for years.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

I think it is just that particular adapter.

The notebooks you reference have a key for W8.1 or W10 Pro and came with downgrade rights to W7 pro.

That is the same way my 350 G1 came to me.   The wireless worked fine with W7 and the F12 key with the airplane on it.

Now I have W10, and the F12 key turns on Airplane Mode. 

In W7, it turned the wifi card off without a notification that airplane mode was on.

And yes it appears with the 3168 AC adapter the power is off in W7 and I have no clue how to turn it on.

Here is the link to the wireless button driver on your notebook's support page...

This package provides the driver for the HP Wireless Button on supported models running a supported operating system. HP Wireless Button allows the physical (hardware) wireless radio button on the system to enable and disable the wireless connection on the system.

http://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp82501-83000/sp82717.exe

[Ian50]

As we thought:

"The operating system is inadequate for the installation of the HP wireless radio button"

The 3rd party usb3 wifi adapter solution remains as cheap, efficient and practical.

Been fun in its' own way - sort of a sport with the risk of damaging a machine. However, this particular saga has finally finished.

Thanks Paul

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Yes, we have thoroughly beat this to death, and unfortunately, it will remain one of the PC's world's great unsolved mysteries.

Glad to have participated in this adventure.

[jorkki]

I had not even thought about it, but I do have the same adapter in my Pavilion 15. Just for fun I downloaded the latest Fedora on a USB stick and it booted just fine and the Function+F12 airplane mode works as well so it seems the Linux developers have cracked this problem. Or maybe the pavilion is different from the 250 G6, can't be sure of that.

It should not be a huge effort for the  HP BIOS team to fix this in the next release for the Windows 7 users either. Anyone listening? Default the Intel WiFi 3168 adapter active, ok!