Intel AC 7260 Dual band wi-fi card compatibility

[mojouk]

Hey guys and girls. First post in the forum here;)

I'm about to upgrade some parts on my Pav G6 1344sa, namely replace the HDD with a SSD and replace the DVD drive with the HDD, replace the tired keyboard for a new one and upgrade the wifi card for a 5G dual band so i can untilize the speed of my newly installed fibre broadband. After a bit of research i have read there maybe issues getting the Intel AC 7260 card i just ordered to work in this notebook. Can anyone confirm if it will work? I read that some users have used a tweak of covering pin 20 and/or pin 51 with tape to make it compatible, anyone tried this or can explain how this works?

Cheers

[Huffer]

No it will not work and the covering of the pins is actually a Lenovo trick that I have never seen anybody recommend for an HP. I would think it will not work since the problem is a whitelist. The card has to prove to the BIOS what it is, not hide what it is from the BIOS so stopping the identification data from being read will just cause the wifi card to be rejected by the BIOS. As stated, there is a BIOS whitelist and only the specific HP branded wifi cards originally offered with the laptop will pass and allow the system to boot past BIOS. If you want that list just post back. 

[mojouk]

OK thanks, I'll have the card tomorrow so i will try anyway. Maybe HP have added more cards to the whitelist with the latest bios update i've just installed, one can live in hope;)

I certainly won't be buying HP pruducts again. This whitelist thing is a **bleep** inconvienance. I bet none of the cards on the whitelist are dual band or bluetooth .4 compatible either. Is this whitelist BS right across the HP notebook range or just the G6 series? I ask because other buyers that have reviewed this card on Amazon here in the UK have had no problems getting it to work on HP laptops!

[REO51ST]

@mojouk

● Atheros 9285G 802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter 580101-001

● Broadcom 4313 802.11b/g/n 1x1 WiFi and 2070 Bluetooth 2.1+EDR Combo

adapter (BT3.0+HS ready) 600370–001

● Broadcom 4313AGN 802.11a/b/g/draft-n WiFi Adapter 593836-001

● Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1030 + Bluetooth (802.11b/g/n) 631956-001

● Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1000 (802.11b/g/n) 593530-001

● Ralink 5390GN 802.11b/g/n 1x1 WiFi Adapter 630703-001

● Ralink 5390BC8 802.11b/g/n 1x1 WiFi and Bluetooth 3.0+HS Combo Adapter 630705-001

● Realtek 8188GN 802.11b/g/n 1x1 WiFi Adapter 640926-001

● Realtek 8188BC8 802.11a/b/g/n 2x2 WiFi and Bluetooth 3.0+HS Combo Adapter 602993-001

● Atheros AR9002WB-1NGB 802.11b/g/n 1x1 WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR Combo

Adapter593127-001

● Atheros 9285G 802.11b/g/n 1x1 WiFi Adapter 605560-005

● Atheros 9485GN 802.11b/g/n 1x1 WiFi and 3012 Bluetooth 4.0 Combo Adapter 655795-001

● Realtek RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n 1x1 WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 LE Combo Adapter 656119-001

● Broadcom 4313GN 802.11b/g/n 1x1 WiFi and 20702 Bluetooth 4.0 Combo

Adapter657325-001

● HP Integrated Module with Bluetooth 2.1 Wireless Technology 537921-001

It is not just HP but Dell, IBM as you already mentioned that have white lists for WiFi cards.

They must all abide by FCC regulations.

Look on the bottom of your laptop or under the battery and you will see the FCC label.

Regards,

REO

[mojouk]

FCC laws are country specific and not always the same in different countries. I would take a guess that most wi-fi cards conform to these laws including the Intel card I want to use. You call it FCC regulations, i call it greed;) After a lengthy search I found a whitelist free bios that will get round this.

[Huffer]

Be careful of hacked BIOS. HP laptops perform a check of the checksum and if the BIOS does not pass it, the laptop will be dead as a doornail. And coming as they do from the dark side of the internet it is not unusual that they have embedded rootkits.

But you are preaching to the choir here. I was never in favor of the whitelist and am glad to see it has gone the way of the DoDo Bird just too late to help you. I will also say that if your laptop was delivered originally in the UK, it may not have a BIOS whitelist. Since you are going to buy the 7260ac card anyway, give it a try before you load the hacked BIOS and it just might work. No harm in trying. The US FCC has no jurisdiction in the UK, but I do not really know if HP goes to the trouble of making different motherboards for US and UK distribution. 

[mojouk]

Yep, its a risk but if i believe the source then its tried and tested. The machine is well past its warranty and there are ways to rescue a currupt bios if the worst happens and you know the right people;)

If HP are ending the whole white list saga then why aren't they rolling out bios updates to their existing customers? Why are we relying on hackers to do what they should be doing? I can only guess how many dissatisfied customers are pledging not to purchase HP products again over this. I know they are not alone but there are many other manufactures that don't feel the need to limit current and potential customers in this way, it just seems crazy to me the powers that be did not see this coming back to bite them in the *ss;)  

Incidently, I checked most of the wifi cards in the white list for this notebook and they are all obsolete and no longer avaliable to purchace new!! What happens if the card was faulty and needed replacing? I should be limited to trying to get a secondhand part because HP did a deal with certain venders to sell mostly rubbish WLAN cards at grossly over inflated prices and now no longer supports an older product? At least give us the option to buy what we want. The only reason this card may not work is because HP says so, the hardware and software can work quite happily together otherwise,

Peace Bro

[BBQ_Must]

So? Been a while. Did it work?

I have same Atheros AR9002WB-1NG card in my Toshiba Qosmio laptop and I want to upgrade to the Intel 7260 AC (HMWWB.R). I saw a French guy doing a disassembly of my laptop on Youtube, it looked pretty easy. Actually I just need to unclick the keyboad out of its location and the wifi card is underneath it.

(Atheros AR9002WB)

Only question is, will this new card fit and work? Would be great to have a bluetooth 4.0 and AC wifi.

[mojouk]

Nope, despite flashing the bios and trying to cover certain pins on the card I was unable to get it working. I think it might be something to do with the way my laptop uses a key on the keyboard to enable/disable the wi-fi connection. Anyway it was too much hassle and in the end I gave up and got a duel band USB dongle. I also got a gaming laptop recently which has an intel duel band wi-fi/bluetooth card. Needless to say it was not an HP product.

Getting to the card and swapping them out is the easy part but I cant answer your question i'm afraid as I'm not familiar with Toshiba laptops and don't know if they have the same white list bs that HP implemented. Even if they dont white list their bios's you might still run into problems getting it to work as I have. Best thing is too see if there is a Toshiba forum and ask there or get a USB duel band dongle and have done with it;)

Good luck

[BBQ_Must]

So sorry to learn that your efforts were in vain. I hope your new gaming laptop doesn't blacklist NICs like that HP did. Lesson learnt I guess.

I haven't ordered my Intel 7260 yet. Just doing more research. Maybe I could just get the next level up from my current Atheros AR9002. Who knows. Good thing people post their experience online.