HP Pavilion 15-ec1073dx Gaming Laptop unable to change wifi card

[YHDiamond]

I have an HP Pavilion 15-ec1073dx Gaming Laptop and my wifi card bugs out on some networks so I am trying to change it for a new one. I have tried 4 separate cards and none of them even show up in Device manager (even when showing hidden devices and searching for legacy ones, and it also doesn't show up in linux lspci). I have even tried replacing my existing card (RTL8822CE) with a very similar card, the RTL8822BE and it still didn't work. 

I am considering the possibility that the laptop is locked down to only accept the wifi card that the computer came with. Is this something that is likely? Would there be any way to get around it?

Thanks!

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

Yes, it is very possible the notebook has a BIOS whitelist since you installed 4 different model Wi-Fi cards and none of them worked.

There would be no way that I know of to get around that problem.

The parts list for the 15-ec1xxx model series does not show any of those notebooks coming with anything but the RTL8822CE.

HP PartSurfer

The only suggestion I can offer would be to update the Wi-Fi driver to the latest version if you have not done so already.

2024.10.228.7      09/14/2023

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp149501-150000/sp149656.exe 

[YHDiamond]

I've updated the drivers and it still doesn't work. It's absolutely ridiculous that there's a bios whitelist on this device. Anyone know of a way to get around it?