HP/Compaq locking down hardware in the BIOS :(

[t_ski]

To try to make this long story short...

A few years back I bought my wife a Compaq Presario laptop for Christmas. This came with Broadcomm wireless b/g, which for the most part works fine, unless we are streaming video. Since my router/AP supports wireless N (not dual-band), I bought a mini-PCIe card that had an HP compatible number on it, and planned to swap it out for the Broadcomm b/g that's currently in it.

When I installed the card, I got an error message that says "104-Unsupported wireless network device detected. System Halted. Remove device and restart." After spending several hours online last night researching this, I found out HP locks down their BIOS files to only allow "supported" (ie: HP brand only) wireless cards. I found a couple tricks like this one:

http://helpdeskgeek.com/help-desk/f...-network-device-detected-system-halted-error/

Updating the BIOS did not work for me, and I need to perform a full-backup before I will consider resetting the BIOS (just in case a repair installtion is truely necessary). Does anyone know if the third option (reprogramming the EEPROM through Knoppix) will work on an Intel WiFi Link 5100 wireless N card (model # 512AN_MMW)?

Had I known all this before I started, I don't think I would have messed with it.

 

[skriefal]

You can sometimes find BIOSes that have been modded to disable the whitelist. Spend some time at Google searching for "whitelist XYZ modded bios", where XYZ is your laptop model. Perhaps you'll find something. You'll need to be willing to accept a bit of risk, of course, as this are certainly not official HP BIOSes and using them is likely to void any remaining warranty.

 

[coolVariable]

Lenovo does this too!
Pisses me off a lot.

Don't buy from these computer makers!

 

[DaveSimmons]

Do any brands / manufacturers -not- now lock the BIOS for internal cards?

Although it annoys the do-it-yourselfer it makes sense from a support and warranty perspective that untested cards with unknown heat generation and power use shouldn't be allowed.

 

[coolVariable]

Do any brands / manufacturers -not- now lock the BIOS for internal cards?

Although it annoys the do-it-yourselfer it makes sense from a support and warranty perspective that untested cards with unknown heat generation and power use shouldn't be allowed.

Dell didn't do it a while back - can't speak for them nowadays.

 

[Hacp]

You didn't know they did this? Well now you know.

 

[t_ski]

You can sometimes find BIOSes that have been modded to disable the whitelist. Spend some time at Google searching for "whitelist XYZ modded bios", where XYZ is your laptop model. Perhaps you'll find something. You'll need to be willing to accept a bit of risk, of course, as this are certainly not official HP BIOSes and using them is likely to void any remaining warranty.

Thanks for the tip - not something I thought of. As far as warranty is concedrned, I believe there is none left, so it is soley a matter of making it work and not screwing up the laptop.

 

[WackyDan]

They all do it. This ensures that when you call for support that you only have a supported device installed...And when you are making millions of devices this does indeed make a lot of sense.

I've worked in the industry a long time. I know what it takes for any manufacturer to qualify any given part for inclusion into a system build or option. Besides the internal certification, the driver support and marketing costs are pretty high.

You can also argue that they do it to sell more options at high margin.

 

[coolVariable]

They all do it. This ensures that when you call for support that you only have a supported device installed...And when you are making millions of devices this does indeed make a lot of sense.

I've worked in the industry a long time. I know what it takes for any manufacturer to qualify any given part for inclusion into a system build or option. Besides the internal certification, the driver support and marketing costs are pretty high.

You can also argue that they do it to sell more options at high margin.

Dell doesn't as far as I can tell from google.

 

[Emulex]

while you are in there be sure to add slic 2.1 if its not there

 

[Bateluer]

Dell doesn't as far as I can tell from google.

Can't speak for all their models, but we recently replaced the internal Broadcom wireless cards in a few hundred Vostro 1000s with Intel models, 39 or 49s.

 

[t_ski]

They all do it. This ensures that when you call for support that you only have a supported device installed...And when you are making millions of devices this does indeed make a lot of sense.

I've worked in the industry a long time. I know what it takes for any manufacturer to qualify any given part for inclusion into a system build or option. Besides the internal certification, the driver support and marketing costs are pretty high.

You can also argue that they do it to sell more options at high margin.

If that's the case, then why does it have to be the specific HP/Compaq vendor ID and not the Intel vendor ID of the same model card HP sells you? It's to make sure they get their fair share of the cash from your pocket.

 

[Emulex]

ask the FCC why that # on the bottom of the laptop is relevant to the cards the laptop was designed for.

Also ask intel why the name centrino can only be used with an intel nic?

 

[t_ski]

nevermind

 

[coolVariable]

Aw, shit man - I'm sorry. I thought this whole time it was the manufacturers who were being greedy. If I'd have known that the government was making them charge more, I'd never have said anything about it in my first post. No, wait - I didn't, did I?

The whole point of this thread was to see if the EEPROM reprogramming was still valid with a newer card. The old posts I found on line were from 2 or 3 years back. I'm not here to start a flame-war between why it's done and who's doing it. If any of you are not going to add to the value of this discussion (by which I mean answer the question in the first post or give another solution), then don't post. 'nough said.

Way to get pissy when people tried to help.

 

[t_ski]

I apologize. Not trying to be pissy, but just don't want to get into the whole blame game here. The post he made had nothing to do with the discussion, and neither did WackyDan's or Hacp. I don't care who locked the laptop down or why - I am just trying to find a way around it.

The most helpful post so far in this discussion belongs to skriefal:

You can sometimes find BIOSes that have been modded to disable the whitelist. Spend some time at Google searching for "whitelist XYZ modded bios", where XYZ is your laptop model. Perhaps you'll find something. You'll need to be willing to accept a bit of risk, of course, as this are certainly not official HP BIOSes and using them is likely to void any remaining warranty.

Looking for more info like this please! Thanks to all for helping so far.

 

[taltamir]

I think it is extremely relevant to the discussion to know that this is done because of the government and not the company being jerks.
If it was the company, then this is a reason not to buy from them. If this is the government, then its ALL laptops, not just HP.

 

[t_ski]

Again, does not matter who or why, just how I can get around it.

 

[Emulex]

google my digital life - you will find the modders

 

[t_ski]

Excellent information! Found a ton of info there:

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/forums/25-Bios-Mods

Now I just need to read through it and see what applies. If all else fails, they have the BIOS mod request section.

 

[taltamir]

Again, does not matter who or why, just how I can get around it.

Again, does not matter what you say, it DOES matter why.
My instinct when hearing that they do it was "boycott them".

As for how to get around it... you need a hacked firmware. It is illegal but it might exist on the web. I highly doubt it since it is a specific laptop model from HP among many models. Compare that to the iphone jail breaking where there is more of a market, more of an incentive, and less hardware variety.

 

[skriefal]

I think it is extremely relevant to the discussion to know that this is done because of the government and not the company being jerks.

If this were solely the government's fault then every brand would have enforced whitelists. But that's definitely not the case. The reality, I believe, is that the product that they sell you -- the assembled laptop with installed wireless card -- must pass FCC testing. They don't want to pay for the testing of every possible combination of wireless card, so they provide only a limited number of wifi options when you purchase the laptop.

This does not, however, imply that they must implement measures to prevent you from installing your own card. If that were true then the same restrictions should also apply to USB and PCMCIA/Cardbus/Expresscard wireless adapters.

It is probable that the BIOS whitelists are there solely to ease support and to maximize profit, not due to any legal requirement.

 

[Emulex]

no the expresscard adapters have their own fcc #'s on them. same with USB.

Technically i don't think it would be legal to put a wifi card in a laptop that did not ship with one.

Why would you put an unsupported card in anyways? that could cause warranty issues and RF is a known issue when causing havoc on other parts.

 

[t_ski]

Again, I am going to ask that the debate of who or why stops. Please post only comments regarding the questions in the first post.