Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
Ahh, HP. How times have changed. I've been using HP for many many years and it seems to get worse with every product I buy. First my DV9000 has a GPU failure. Then my 8560p has a GPU failure. So, I get a new notebook, whatever was the best one in stock at my local Staples, since I needed one fast. Ended up with this 15-ac144ND. i7 CPU, Dedicated radeon card, 8 Gigs of ram, full HD matte screen, and a bottom of the barrel wireless card. No 5Ghz, no AC, no bluetooth. Whatever, wireless cards cost $20 and take 10 minutes to install. Or so I thought.
After downloading the service manual, I see the Intel 3165 listed as an option for the wireless card in my machine. It would fit my needs and is readily available. Since the service manuals are usually full of sh*t, I decide to ask HP Support. They verify with their resources that yes, the Intel 3165 is 100% compatible with my machine and I can go ahead with the upgrade.
I get my 3165 yesterday and guess what? Doesn't work. I put it in and the computer acts like there is nothing in the slot at all. Not detected in device manager (and before you ask, yes, i did try all the drivers I could think of) nor is it detected in the BIOS. Whatever, might be a dead card right? After all, I didn't get any BIOS errors telling me there's an incompatible wireless card installed. So why won't it detect? I call up HP and they tell me to f-off and call Intel, since it's their wireless card. Intel tells me to RMA the card but cant find it in their system so they promise to escalate my issue and get back to me. So far so good. Except for one thing: I never believed that the wireless card was dead. I thought it was still doing a Whitelist in the BIOS but it just wasn't telling me any more.
To test out my theory, I buy another wireless card, this one was not listed anywhere in the Service Manual. It's the Intel 7265. In theory, I should get a error 104 incompatible wireless card, but guesss what? It does the same thing. Not detected by the BIOS nor detected by the device manager. I try linux, same story.
My best guess is that there's still whitelisting on these machines, it just doesn't tell you anymore. Personally, I think it's better to tell me it's not on the whitelist than to not say anything at all and just leave me clueless as to what the issue is here. As to why HP support tells me (multiple times!) that the Intel 3165 is compatible when it's clearly not, I haven't got a clue.
HP: You've wasted my time and money by supplying false information and enforcing shadow-whitelists. You've lost a lifelong customer.
So, to recap: HP Support tells me 3165 is compatible, it's not. I try a definitely incompatible wireless card, same story. Whitelisting is still a thing on these machines, even though they supposedly stopped doing it. Waste of money, waste of time.
My experience upgrading a wireless card and why you should not trust HP
Discussion in 'HP' started by ShadowLabs, Jun 9, 2016.
