Upgrade wireless card

[xiaomantou]

Hi, I want to upgrade this model's wireless card for Bluetooth and 5G frequency. It has RT5390 (half mini pcie) which only support 2.4G and no BT. I plan to add another antenna and install RTL8822CE. Does this HP machine has bios whitelist? By the way, can I have the last bios installation package for this machine? I can't found it anywhere.

Thanks.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

HP does not provide any info on what PC's have BIOS whitelists.

If yours was made in 2011 or earlier, the chances are almost 100% that it does.

If it was made in 2012 or later, there is a chance a different Wi-Fi card would work.

In any event, the RTL8822CE Wi-Fi card wouldn't fit in your PC because it is an entirely different form factor with smaller antenna terminals.

What I suggest you do is to purchase a dual band USB Wi-Fi adapter.

I recently bought this one this past Summer to use on a HP desktop PC I bought used that did not come with Wi-Fi.

It is both dual band Wi-Fi and has Bluetooth and works great.

Amazon.com: USB WiFi Bluetooth Adapter, 600Mbps Dual Band 2.4/5Ghz Wireless Network External Receive...

Updating the BIOS would not remove the whitelist.

If you want to experiment with an internal card, I recommend this one, with this HP part number:

Broadcom BCM4352 802.11ac 2x2 Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 4.0 combo   HP part # 724935-001.

You can probably find the card in used but tested and working condition on eBay or Ali Express.

HP retired support for your PC since it is more than 10 years old.

The only drivers available that I could find are from this reputable 3rd party website, but there are no BIOS updates available, which means that HP probably didn't release any or one would have been there.

HP Omni 120-1200en drivers for Windows 7 64-bit (driverscollection.com)

[xiaomantou]

This model doesn't have BIOS whitelist.

The BIOS and CPU shows this machine was built in 2011.

Below are things I tried:

1. I found two dos programs that can add card to BIOS whitelist, they should do the same thing, you have to try to see if your model have that space to write it. Sadly, my model doesn't. wlandos ,wwandos .

2. I just realised I have a old machine acer aspire 3820tzg, and luckily it also has a HMC card(AR5B97/AR9287?), so I exchanged the cards and it turns out that both model have no restriction on wireless cards. This card has two terminals but no BT.

The seller told me RTL8822CE has IPEX1 terminals, I checked the I-PEX website and found  this machine has the same model  but how can you tell the size difference? I can't found any information about the size of RTL8822CE. I am confused.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Your PC has a Mini-PCI half mini card (HMC) form factor Wi-Fi card.

Your PC's Wi-Fi card uses U. FL Mini PCI antenna wires which have larger connecting couplers than what the Realtek card uses.

The mainstream Realtek RTL8822CE is a M.2 form factor card and will not fit, let alone the much smaller antenna terminals attach to a U. FL antenna wire.

Take a look at the differences:

RT5390:

OEM 691415-001 630703-001 630705-001 RALINK RT5390 Mini PCI WiFi Card | eBay

RTL8822CE:

RTL8822CE NGFF M.2 Network WiFi Card 802.11AC Bluetooth 5.0 Laptop WiFi Adapter | eBay

Now if you are referring to a RTL8822CE chip modified for the HMC form factor such as this one, and your PC does not have a BIOS whitelist, then yes it should work.

RTL8822CE Mini PCIe WiFi Card 1200Mbps 802.11ac Dual Band Bluetooth5.0 WiFi Card | eBay