Recently I bought an Quectel EC200A-EU to use on a HP Probook 6570b (2012) notebook. What I didn’t know, is that the notebook has a whitelist on BIOS blocking all the WWAN modules that isn’t in the list, to work, in fact, when I plug the Quectel module on the notebook WWAN interface, the notebook don’t even start neither enters the BIOS.
Since the notebook has an RSA BIOS, it’s a bit tricky to remove the whitelist, so I was thinking if there’s any chance to change the Quectel module to presents himself as one of the HP modules that are in the BIOS whitelist.
I’ve never heard about the BIOS whitelist.
The EC200A is just an USB device and the there is no BIOS driver for it. And so I guess that do you plug it in the incorrect slot?
There is some possible ways to change the USB device vendor id and product id. But I don’t think it will work. And once you change it, once the PC boot up into OS, the USB device might not be recoginzed.
Yes, some HP notebooks, have a whitelist of WWAN modules that are “compatible” with it, and if you connect a WWAN module that isn’t on that list, the notebook will not detect the module.
My notebook, as I said before, is a HP Probook 6570b, and it has a PCie WWAN interface in the motherboard, to connect a PCIe WWAN module/Mobile Broadband Module.
In my case the compatible modules are:
HP hs2350 HSPA+ Mobile Broadband Module
HP lt2523 LTE/HSPA+ Mobile Broadband Module
HP lt2522 LTE/EV-DO Mobile Broadband Module
HP un2430 EV-DO/HSPA Mini Card 702080-001
HP un2430 EV-DO/HSPA Mobile Broadband Module
What you are telling me, is that the Quectel EC200A-EU despite being a PCIe WWAN 4G module, cannot be connected directly to a PCIe WWAN interface? It can only be connected via a usb adapter??? So if it’s a USB device, why are you selling it, as a PCIe module?
If my notebook has an internal interface to connect this kind of modules, and also has a SIM card slot, why should I use an external adapter? That doesn’t make sense.
Well, I’m seeing that I will have to buy another module, compatible or not with the white list, but one that can be connected to a PCIe WWAN interface.
If the Quectel EC200A-EU is an USB device, that must be the reason for my PC don’t even start, when I connect it to it.
If you want to learn about what was my idea, read this posts:
Even the EC200A-EU is in mini-PCIe format, actually it could only communicate with the X86 via USB.
miniPCIe is just a kind of hardware packages. All the Quectel LTE modules only support USB. Only the LTE-A and 5G modem support PCIe.
In my guess, there should be some hardware problems like that the Quectel module will drop too much power, or the USB cable might affect some important components such as DRAM.
Because it is just USB device, if you think there is any problems with the modem itself, if you remove the Windows driver, will it help?
Sorry, I didn’t explain it the best way. My notebook won’t start, only when I connect the EC200A-EU to the PCIe interface. If I connect it to the USB port, there’s no issue.
Ah ok. Yes, the notebook won’t start, probably because of that, the Quectel module is a USB device, and I’m connecting it to a PCIe interface, so probably the interface doesn’t have enough power and doesn’t support a USB device connect to it.
As I said, other PCie devices that are not in the whitelist, let the notebook start, but windows won’t be able to detect them.
