[ALL ProBooks/Laptops in General] Our WiFi WhiteListing Days Are 0v3r!

Tired of having unsupported WiFi cards? Scared of bricking your laptop with a bad whitelist BIOS flash? Getting tired of that ugly USB WiFi adapter hanging out? Well, what do you know, you can say good bye to those things from now on. =D

Special thanks to DIY Setup 1.x for the antiwhitelisting and Philip_Petev for pushing me to do this or else I’d be too lazy!

1. Make yourself a bootable DIY Setup 1.x (It's $25! You can use this with eGPU also!)
2. Boot with your ORIGINAL WLAN card attached.
3. Enter Setup 1.x
a. Select DIY eGPU Setup 1.10b5: menu-based setup
b. Go to “PCIe Ports” > under “Anti-Whitelist” > !Save Ports > Select your WLAN port (i.e. mine was p4)
4. Turn off computer and remove wlan card.
5. Attach Your NEW “OSX Supporting WLAN”
6. Enter Setup 1.x
a. Select DIY eGPU Setup 1.10b5: menu-based setup
b. Go to “PCIe Ports” > Enable Ports → Select the port number from above (i.e. p4)
c. Select “Restore port4” under Anti-whitelist
i. It should say “SUCCESS!! Dev:ven is registered on port4”
7. Select Chainload mbr under Apply Config and off you go with your new working OSX compatible WiFi card!

See my screen shot! It’s awesome. I’m using an Atheros 9285 and I’m getting Airport extreme support!

Developers: I still need help with two things if possible…

1. Integrate DIY Setup 1.x into the bootloader so I can automatically boot up to it without using the USB.
2. Everytime I boot into OSX/Windows I have to hard switch the wifi to on and off in order for it to start seeing the networks. Any way around this?!

If you decide to test this, please let us know if it works or not. Laptop model,etc.

Update: "Everytime I boot into OSX/Windows I have to hard switch the wifi to on and off in order for it to start seeing the networks. Any way around this?!" - SOLVED! Thanks to Nando4 for suggesting to short/tape pin 20 of the wifi card. Now, the wifi card turns on right when OSX loads, no more using the hard switch!

i'm just posting this to say thanks it seems there is not much interest on this, but there is, its just that for me this is too much "advanced" to post something helpfull, but i'm subscribed to this. If there is some howto or detailed instructions ill be happy to try.

thx!

Let me make sure I understand this correctly. You are saying that anyone with a probook with the BIOS restriction on wireless adapters can load this DIY setup to allows any wireless card to work (ones that at least work natively in OS X)? Am I correct? How do I obtain the DIY setup? Do I need anything else besides a new broadcom wireless adapter that works with OS X natively?'

If this actually works this is an amazing find!!!

Inmike09 said:

Let me make sure I understand this correctly. You are saying that anyone with a probook with the BIOS restriction on wireless adapters can load this DIY setup to allows any wireless card to work (ones that at least work natively in OS X)? Am I correct? How do I obtain the DIY setup? Do I need anything else besides a new broadcom wireless adapter that works with OS X natively?'

If this actually works this is an amazing find!!!

Click to expand...

Sounds interesting, unfortunately software is "buy before you try"
http://forum.notebookreview.com/6295529-post641.html

@BigDonkey I bought the software in hopes of providing a test bed for our forum. I am sorry if I sound like such a n00b, but is there a program I could use to build a bootable DIY drive? I have a 300 mbps native working os x WLAN card I could try this with, but I can't even get past the first step.

Once I get past there I want to make sure that I don't need to boot from a USB drive if it does work.

I think for our GPT partition we are stuck with using USB drive created by RMPrepUSB


1. Download and install RMPrepUSB [~6MB]
2. Ensure you've run c:\eGPU\eGPU-Setup-mount.bat so have a V:[DIYEGPUIMG] drive
3. Run RMPrepUSB, set options as shown in red here to copy the disk image onto a bootable USB stick.

BigDonkey said:

I think for our GPT partition we are stuck with using USB drive created by RMPrepUSB


1. Download and install RMPrepUSB [~6MB]
2. Ensure you've run c:\eGPU\eGPU-Setup-mount.bat so have a V:[DIYEGPUIMG] drive
3. Run RMPrepUSB, set options as shown in red here to copy the disk image onto a bootable USB stick.

Click to expand...

I did all that. I can't seem to create the correct bootable USB.

Try formating USB drive in Windows first as FAT32 before running RMPrepUSB with recommended options.

What happens? Can not boot from USB? or setup doesn't work?

Semi-success!

I followed the instructions set above and was able to get my Mountain Lion installation to recognize the new wireless card. My test bed is a Probook 4530s A7K05UT#ABA. I used a BCM94322HM8L (verified to work in one of my custom builds). I received the BIOS white-list warning, but after running through the steps my install recognized it. I had to manually hit the Wifi button next to the screen to get it to search for network. This is where it got a little wonky. It would search for networks, but I could never officially switch the Wi-Fi on. No networks are found, but in About this Mac > System Information it reads this cards and all the channels it goes up to. Somewhere in the 160's if I remember correctly.

I had to quickly put my Atheros back in because I need a reliable connection.

Please let me know what suggestions any of you may have!

Inmike09 said:

Let me make sure I understand this correctly. You are saying that anyone with a probook with the BIOS restriction on wireless adapters can load this DIY setup to allows any wireless card to work (ones that at least work natively in OS X)? Am I correct? How do I obtain the DIY setup? Do I need anything else besides a new broadcom wireless adapter that works with OS X natively?'

If this actually works this is an amazing find!!!

Click to expand...

Yes, that's correct. I believe the software works with other laptops also (that's why I'm posting in hoping that there will be a lot of testers). I tested it on my ProBook 5330m and it works great.