Alternative to Ralink RT5390 half pci-e wireless card

[cytherian]

I've used two different HP laptops in my living room with wireless signal strength varying from 3-4 bars. Just today I got another HP laptop with a Ralink card installed and this one is staying mostly at 2 bars, only occasionally up to 3. Nothing else has changed.

The reasonably strong wireless connections on my other two laptops was facilitated by Intel 5100 and 5300 wireless cards. Are the Ralink wireless cards considered a step or two behind the leading brands? Would it be a good idea to get an Intel card instead, or is it more likely that the laptop has a deficient antenna arrangement? I've searched on-line for my laptop model (dv6-6145dx) and found a couple of similar complaints, but no worthwhile resolutions.

Are all PCI-e wireless cards created equal, meaning you should be able to install them in any laptop that accommodates the type? Or do some motherboard architectures lend themselves to work better with only certain brands/models?

 

[bobafetthotmail]

I'd check from Device manager, and open the panel about that card, then look for settings about signal strength or power savings. Of course more signal strength = less power saved, but quite a few cards do have 2-3 power settings you can tweak, and you can see the difference afterwards.

It could have a crappy antenna, and in that case there is little you can do, short of modding the case to add a decent one.

Afaik, minipci-e is just an interface (the ones in laptops are "mini", an actual pci-e slot is bigger than that and won't fit in a laptop). You can run anything from it, modems, network cards/bluetooth, video co-processors, external GPUs (if you are a nerd with some experience), or whatever.

So yeah, you can swap the card, connect the antenna wires and install the drivers, and everything should be fine.

 

[cytherian]

^ Thanks for your advice, BobbaFett. I checked my particular WiFi card and the only selection I have to control the card's operation is the roaming sensitivity. It was set to Medium, so I switched it to High. I've seen on-line other settings that should be possible like "Transmit Power" and "Antenna Diversity", but those are absent from my device... which leads me to suspect that this isn't one of the better WiFi cards to have.


And so it would seem that the only two choices given when purchasing this laptop were RaLink and Atheros, it is probably due to business relationships and not compatibility. In this case, I think I'll give an Intel card a shot. The 5100 has been pretty good for me and there are so many available on "that auction site."

 

[bobafetthotmail]

That should be it. Try both high and low. Either should raise or decrease the laptop's wifi detection (should see more or less bars in the icon)

If you saw on the Internet that such cards should have those settings, it might be that you don't have the right driver. Windows 7 does have pretty good generic wifi drivers, so some manufacturers "forget" to install the proper ones.
Check that you have the latest anyway before spending money.

Atheros and Ralink aren't crappy cards imho (they aren't top dog, but they are reliable and drivers don't suck). Besides, they do have a market on "that auction site" as well, so you may repay or shave off half the price of an Intel one.

 

[cytherian]

^ I did experiment with that setting, ranging from low to high and highest with no appreciable difference. I did upgrade drivers and that also didn't make a difference. I visited a relative's home and was able to use their wireless and got a good strength indicator, but the distance from the wireless router is much shorter than in my home.

Anyway, I did more searching on the Internet and still haven't found any specific complaints about my laptop's wireless connection, other than some independent complaints about the Ralink RT5390 wireless adapter.

I'm thinking of getting an Intel 5100, but I'm now a bit put off by the flood of cheap copies from China. I'll have to do some more investigation of a reasonable source that provides genuine hardware.

 

[cytherian]

Well, the game of wireless cards just got a little more frustrating than I anticipated.

Apparently a supported connector format (e.g. PCIe, Half-mini, etc) does not guarantee compatibility. There are only certain chipsets that will work properly with a given wireless card. PLUS... apparently newer computers have a whitelist of supported part numbers stored in the BIOS and will REFUSE to work with a wireless card that isn't in the list. Great. Just great.

Anyway, Intel is apparently out because my AMD processor and chipset won't play nice with the brand.

What it comes down to is the following wifi cards: Broadcom 4313GN (657325-001), Atheros 9485GN (655795-001), Atheros 9285G (605560-005), Atheros AR8002WB (593127-001), Realtek 8188BC8 (602993-001) and Realtek RTL8191SE (640926-001). And naturally, these are all single band. I'd really rather have a dual band wifi card, but I'm not sure if there's some way to trick the BIOS into accepting a different card by a supported brand.

Any recommendations?

 

[bobafetthotmail]

Ah damn. That's a BIOS lock, processor and chipset have nothing to do with it (as neither deals directly with the card, it's the BIOS first and Windows7 later that does), it's just a string of BIOS code that checks the Hardware IDs of the card and locks everything down if it's not in its whitelist.
If you let it boot and then connect the card afterwards, it will work fine until the next reboot (where BIOS freaks out again).
In simple words, HP (that wrote the BIOS) is an a$$ and won't let you use other cards than what it thinks are best for that particular model. I thought this kind of bs was limited to enterprise-class models where tampering would be non-existant anyway.

Assuming you got the list of approved cards already, (probably from the manual) you can try calling HP and see if they know more (but I know from experience that these things crash and burn on a rubber wall), or modding the bios whitelists.

In a bios modding forum I found this, which seems to be a modded bios for a DV6 with a slightly different configuration (has a discrete GPU, while yours does use the processor's integrated GPU, processor and chipset are the same), theoretically should work fine, but if you choose to flash it, it's AT YOUR OWN RISK (as you could brick your laptop). Follow their instructions and read the whole thread first. Make sure your BIOS has some kind of BIOS recovery from USB and that you are ready to do that in case something bad happens. Otherwise you just have to send it back to HP for repairs.

Otherwise you need to get the BIOS brand and the tools to modify the whitelist by yourself. THis is an example of a guy that did it on another laptop. This is a decent place to start from, but there are quite a few bios modding forums around.
It generally involves a hex editor and a tool to extract/reflash the BIOS code from/to the laptop, the latter is usually bios specific.

 

[cytherian]

^ Thanks, BobbaFett. Funny coincidence, as I just came back from a couple of hours combing the bios-mods.com website. I found that F49 BIOS mod as well (sp54724), which is compatible for the 6135 and 6145. However, I also found someone posted a complaint that it did not effectively clear the white list.

In any case, before even trying it I noticed that the BIOS is RSA signed. You're absolutely right, HP is an a$$. I'm not quite ready to swear off the brand as yet, but this isn't helping any. I will definitely have to look into a means of being able to flash the BIOS from USB before trying this, as I certainly don't want a brick situation.

Anyway, thanks a lot for the other links. I have a feeling that hex editing the BIOS whitelist may be the only thing that will be dependable. It's not that complicated (vendor, device, subsys keys in reverse), just tedious.

 

[cytherian]

OK, I have an update on all of this.


First and foremost... you can forget about modifying an RSA signed BIOS. It's a real mess. There are some enterprising hackers out there who know a thing or two about RSA security algorithms and can cobble together some hacks to get around it, but the result is generally not reliable. I read about a couple of people who had to pull their CMOS battery every 3 hours because of periodic lock-ups.

I abandoned my quest to modify the BIOS... mainly because HP stepped up to the plate. Here's what happened:

• I wrote an e-mail to HP's 'executive complaint' representatives, describing the white list issue and the significant frustration it presents for the customer. After several days, I received a phone call from HP. They left a message because I could not take the call at that time. When I called back, they put me in touch with a representative from the HP Notebook division.
• The rep from the HP Notebook division was not technical, but conducted a Q&A with me and took additional details from me. I made it clear that I was "not yet" soured with HP, but if I cannot get a good resolution I will likely not be a repeat customer. They took my details and forwarded them to someone in their technical department. I was given contact info and a ticket number so I could check on things.
• Later that same day, the rep called me back and said that they had a replacement WiFi card for me. Mind you, I am out of warranty by over a year. This was the "HP sourced" version of the same WiFi card I had tried to install previously. Anyway, we confirmed the details and I was promised that a card would be sent in the mail free of charge.
• HP had actually sent the WiFi card via Fedex, next business day. The call was on late Friday, so I would have to wait for it to ship on Monday and arrive Tuesday. It did arrive today.
• The WiFi card was a little ambiguous. I found two different model numbers, depending upon where I looked. But worst of all, the default WiFi drivers would not function. I had to install the old card again and then seek out the drivers. I also found a Realtek diagnostic utility to help. Anyway, I got the software installed and the WiFi card started working. IMMEDIATELY I noticed an improvement. Whereas before I was getting 2-3 signal strength bars, I was now getting 4-5. An astounding difference.

So...

The Ralink RT5390 is junk. They may have better WiFi cards, but I opted for Realtek and got much better performance. My laptop sits 3 floors up from where the wireless router is. My Intel cards would show about a 3-4 bar signal strength, never touching 5 bars. The Realtek is clearly better. The card? RTL8188CE. It also shows up as RTL8192SE... which is supposed to be a 300Mbps card, whereas the RTL8188CE is 150Mbps. Whatever the case, I'm doing much better now.

Bottom line: HP customer service really stepped up. I'm very impressed.

 

[cytherian]

One other note...

The WiFi card I received from HP does not have an incorporated Bluetooth module. I had looked up the supported WiFi cards in the white list for the latest BIOS and saw that the Ralink RT3592 was in the list. I double-checked the model number then bought one of them off of eBay. But when I installed it, I received the dreaded "unsupported WLAN card" message. So... even if you buy a card that is supposed to be supported, you have to buy it from HP. Otherwise, it will not contain their unique item code inside it and thus refuse to start.

The other issue is that you can't just simply visit HP's website and select a WiFi card. For laptops, they are not listed as a separate part you can purchase, so you must call a sales rep. Very tedious and unnecessary.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

it's all part of their "we think our customers are complete idiots that need a nanny to work with computers" motto.

If you don't mind losing a USB port you can buy a "micro bluetooth dongle" and leave it there permanently.

Btw, Realtek also does pro wifi chips, like the one used in this device(that I own), that is used in penetration testing so can do all weird tricks needed.
As a brand I'd rate it on par with Intel. Anyway it's in another league than Atheros and Ralink.

 

[cytherian]

it's all part of their "we think our customers are complete idiots that need a nanny to work with computers" motto.

There are plenty of customers who aren't technical and slower than average in terms of "getting it." If you ever try teaching basic computer skills to a class of elderly students, you'll know exactly what I mean. While computer manufacturers want to sell to anyone (young, old, brilliant, moron, etc), I don't think HP thinks their customers are complete idiots. Their WiFi card restriction is only about making money, not keeping things simple for the customer.

They're also quite devious with this WiFi card restriction. I'd read on another forum that once you've booted up, you can put your computer into sleep mode and then swap in your desired card. That did not work on my laptop. The O/S disables WiFi upon detection of a change and it cannot be re-enabled without rebooting.

If you don't mind losing a USB port you can buy a "micro bluetooth dongle" and leave it there permanently.

That's my next step. Thankfully they've gone ultra slim, like mouse dongles, so they won't protrude. But in the end, I don't use bluetooth frequently so it's easy to just keep in the computer bag when needed.

Btw, Realtek also does pro wifi chips, like the one used in this device(that I own), that is used in penetration testing so can do all weird tricks needed.
As a brand I'd rate it on par with Intel. Anyway it's in another league than Atheros and Ralink.

I didn't realize that the Alfa is driven by Realtek. Good to know that you're happy with it. Have you looked into the wireless-N supported version (here)? Looks pretty well received, although some of the more technical folks who reviewed it said that the range is a bit less than the "G" model (AWUS036H), it isn't true .11n, and it's single channel (no MIMO).

 

[bobafetthotmail]

There are plenty of customers who aren't technical and slower than average in terms of "getting it."

I work in a computer/consumer-electronics assemble/repair/sell/resell shop, and the amount of customers that want this kind of nanny service is pretty high in the incomes of the shop.
Most home customers simply don't know nor care, they want Facebook, Pr0n, Google, Office and whatever to work. If something isn't perfect but works they adapt their habits instead of trying to change it or troubleshoot the issue.
I quit trying to teach them anything long ago, they don't give a *** about how they got into trouble to maybe avoid it next time, they want to get out fast so they can resume their stuff. I rarely manage to convince someone to make backups next time even after he lost all his stuff.

I dislike such people, but I recognize that they are a wide majority of userbase so heh.
Since Android tablets came out, we started selling tablets to them instead of PCs for obvious reasons. And it's amazing that they still call from time to time for support.

That did not work on my laptop. The O/S disables WiFi upon detection of a change and it cannot be re-enabled without rebooting.

That should be normal, you install drivers, power off, remove the card, power up, place the card again. But yeah, not practical.

Have you looked into the wireless-N supported version (here)

hehe, yes but not that model. That thing uses a crappy chip from Ralink, sensitivity and features are NOT up to the older model's standards.
Range with its own antenna is the least important part actually. For most legal work you are generally somewhere inside the building, for the odd hardcore clients that want a more realistic scenario ("huh I want you to try cracking the wifi unseen, like a real bad guy") there is the DIY bigass 30-ish dbi directional antenna that can pick up anything in a 2-3 km cone in front of it (in very optimal line-of-sight conditions can get as far as 5-ish km). It's subtle as a punch in the face, but being a re-purposed old Sat TV dish does not attract so much attention as you might think.

But you need all the wifi cracking features to work reliably, and a better sensitivity if possible.

I have a AWUS036NHR (that has a Realtek chip again) that I bought when they ironed out the linux driver issues. It was not plug-and-play (on linux) as the predecessor when I bought it, but now it should be.

I have seen pro people talk very well of the even newer AWUS036NHA (that has an Atheros chip) too though (although having power limited to 650 mW is significant for longish-range work), but I never had one to test it out.

Btw, check local laws as there are quite a few nations that ban the use of wifi devices beyond 500 or 1000 mW.

EDIT: the one I linked is still considered THE card for non-n wifi. It also allows (as the n version) to make a true wireless hotspot without resorting to windows 7's own virtual wifi drivers. Which in XP days was a great thing, and even now saves a ton of hassle.

 

[mcgyver83]

Hi men, I'm looking for a replacement for this wifi card for an HP g7-1315ez.
Any hints? I'm scared about "BIOS compatibility" ;(