Group: Hardware/Restrictions/Mini PCIe slot restrictions on wireless cards

Description of the issue

Some manufacturers restrict which wireless cards can be used in the Mini PCI Express slot. At least Dell, HP, Lenovo (IBM) and Toshiba have been implicated. When a non-whitelisted card is installed the systems will show an error message (e.g. 'Unauthorized') or otherwise refuse to boot. The whitelist is located in the proprietary BIOS. The given reasoning for this behavior is the regulation of the wireless spectrum by FCC and other national organizations. There are ways around this by modifying either the Wifi card or the BIOS. This is something that has to be taken into consideration when trying to assemble a computer system which would require as little proprietary software/firmware to operate as possible.

Here are some examples:

Brand and Model	Software	Restriction
Thinkpad X60	Stock nonfree BIOS	The boot software refuses to boot if the internal mPCIe WiFi card is not in the whitelist
HP Envy 15	Stock nonfree BIOS	The boot software refuses to boot with a non-whitelisted card or if the card is removed

Possible solutions

• Free boot software typically do not implement such restrictions. Here are some more information on the topic:
  • The Libreboot project
  • The article on single board computers has some information on boot software for single board computers

External links

• Description and solutions on Lenovo hardware
• What the error looks like on an HP