WiFi Upgrade

[MUZICMAN61]

So my current wifi card is an Intel AX200 with dual antennas.  I have tried to install an Intel AX210 for Wifi 6E support.  However once I power the unit back on, it starts to load Windows and then ends up taking me to the Automatic Repair screens.  I can't get it to fully boot into Windows.  I have tried starting in Safe Mode w/Networking.  I see the new card listed in device manager but Windows says it couldn't initialize the device, error code 37.  I don't believe this unit has a white list (purchased January 2021).  

Is there some other step required to update the network card?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

Unfortunately, not every HP notebook made in the last several years are free of BIOS whitelists.

Most do not have them, but some do. 

And we don't know which ones support any model wifi card, because HP does not release any information regarding whitelists.

If the AX210 card was supported in your notebook, it would have been plug and play, and the most you would have had to do would have been to install the drivers, as was discussed in this earlier post this year...

Solved: Re: Can I upgrade my wifi with a unit that is not in the man... - HP Support Community - 787...

In the old days you would immediately get an unsupported wireless card BIOS error before the PC even got into Windows.

Nowadays, a variety of different issues present themselves with unsupported wifi cards.

Some notebooks still present the BIOS error, some show the wifi card working perfectly in the device manager, but it refuses to turn on, some do what yours is doing, and some show absolutely no presence of a wifi card in the device manager.

In some rare cases, you can mask certain contacts on the wireless card to get it to work, but I have no idea if that can be done with yours.

[MUZICMAN61]

Well Mario in that linked post apparently got a AX210 working in his 17t-bw000.  I would think it should work in my 17t-cg100.  But perhaps there was a bios setting or something I need to change before booting into Windows.  I just can't imagine that going from an Intel AX201 to an Intel AX210 would be that difficult.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Yours is a totally different model, with a totally different BIOS.

There are no BIOS or Windows settings to change when you install a wifi card in any HP notebook that I know of, and I have changed a few in my day.

They work, or they don't--with that rare exception of being able to make some wifi cards work in some notebooks by masking certain contact pin numbers.

[MUZICMAN61]

Well I guess I'll think twice about purchasing another HP laptop in the future.  It's clear consistency doesn't exit between similar products.