Spaceninja
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2004
- Messages
- 2,407
My wireless card is having some issues and I am looking for a newer one to replace it with. Any recommendations on a card that works well? I was looking at the Intel AC 7260.
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AC Wireless Card for Lenovo U310 Touch
- Thread starter Spaceninja
- Start date
D
Deleted member 245375
Guest
The issue with Lenovo hardware is that there is usually - I'm not saying there is for that specific laptop, however - a whitelist in the BIOS/UEFI that restricts what wireless cards you can use with them. ThinkPad branded laptops (made by Lenovo) definitely have the whitelist which only allows you to use wireless cards sold by Lenovo itself basically ensuring people that want some kind of upgrade are pretty much forced to buy them directly from Lenovo itself.
Just did a quick search for some more info and it does indeed appear that laptop has a whitelist and there is a modded BIOS firmware available to address it (quite a thread to read through if you're not familiar with this sort of issue):
Lenovo Ideapad u310 Wifi Whitelist Removal
You could probably look on eBay and find a Lenovo certified Intel 7260AC wireless card, of course, if you're not interested in attempting to install a new BIOS which is the only other solution. I've never really seen any complaints about the 7260AC card so far, if you check over at NotebookReview's forums they would probably be able to offer some more information about performance and whether it's worth the upgrade over some other card that would probably require you to install the non-whitelisted modded BIOS at some point.
Not sure if Lenovo sells other brands of wireless cards anymore, I know in the past they did have an Atheros in one ThinkPad I owned long ago, they might also use Broadcom and potentially Realtek based cards too but I can't speak for sure on that. On the very last page of that thread I just provided a link to some users noted they had Broadcom wireless cards and were also wanting to upgrade (and did successfully after installing the modded BIOS) to the 7260AC card so make sure to check that last page out as well.
The 7260AC will more than likely serve whatever needs you have pretty well, the only time I've ever had issues with Intel wireless cards was the very first production model of the old Intel 2200BG cards that had a known defect but it was resolved with the second run (couldn't be fixed with firmware updates).
EDIT:
Be very careful if you do go looking for that modded BIOS - a lot of the links are dead now and searching for the filename turns up a lot of stuff that would probably not be a good idea to mess with especially if they are .exe files: the actual modded BIOS was distributed as a RAR archive, looking around for it now myself just in case. And there's a BIOS for the touch enabled U310 and one for the non-touch enabled so, again, more bullshit for no good reason.
Just did a quick search for some more info and it does indeed appear that laptop has a whitelist and there is a modded BIOS firmware available to address it (quite a thread to read through if you're not familiar with this sort of issue):
Lenovo Ideapad u310 Wifi Whitelist Removal
You could probably look on eBay and find a Lenovo certified Intel 7260AC wireless card, of course, if you're not interested in attempting to install a new BIOS which is the only other solution. I've never really seen any complaints about the 7260AC card so far, if you check over at NotebookReview's forums they would probably be able to offer some more information about performance and whether it's worth the upgrade over some other card that would probably require you to install the non-whitelisted modded BIOS at some point.
Not sure if Lenovo sells other brands of wireless cards anymore, I know in the past they did have an Atheros in one ThinkPad I owned long ago, they might also use Broadcom and potentially Realtek based cards too but I can't speak for sure on that. On the very last page of that thread I just provided a link to some users noted they had Broadcom wireless cards and were also wanting to upgrade (and did successfully after installing the modded BIOS) to the 7260AC card so make sure to check that last page out as well.
The 7260AC will more than likely serve whatever needs you have pretty well, the only time I've ever had issues with Intel wireless cards was the very first production model of the old Intel 2200BG cards that had a known defect but it was resolved with the second run (couldn't be fixed with firmware updates).
EDIT:
Be very careful if you do go looking for that modded BIOS - a lot of the links are dead now and searching for the filename turns up a lot of stuff that would probably not be a good idea to mess with especially if they are .exe files: the actual modded BIOS was distributed as a RAR archive, looking around for it now myself just in case. And there's a BIOS for the touch enabled U310 and one for the non-touch enabled so, again, more bullshit for no good reason.
Last edited by a moderator:
Spaceninja
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2004
- Messages
- 2,407
I don't mind to mod the bios, but I'd rather not. My only real problem is that after the latest Windows 10 update my wireless drops out. My desktop is fine and my router isn't having any issues so I know it is confined to the notebook itself. I'm impatient so I just want to replace the card with something that is faster and has less problems. Running an N150 USB wireless now and it is working fine, just a little slow on downloads. Hopefully MS or Intel fixes the dropped connection issue in a future update. Honestly I had no idea that notebook manufactures are restricting wireless cards in notebooks these days. Then again I have never had the need to swap out the card.