T430s Wireless options

[LKJjr]

New forum member here. Have used Thinkpads exclusively for about 20 years, won't have any other laptops if I can help it. But now I need a bit of advice...

My wife's T430s has begun to experience some intermitent connectivity problems in our home network. Since the network has very good signal strength (and other appliances on the network are not having issues) I believe her on board adapter (an Intel 633ANHWM) may be failing. I had hoped to upgrade a bit, but after some research the much dreaded whitelist has me rethinking my options. So here's my question...

Can I just bypass the internal card altogether and use a usb style wireless adapter? If so, will I need to disable the onboard adapter physically and/or in the BIOS?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[RealBlackStuff]

Look at the "1vyrain" thread above your post, to get rid of the wifi whitelist.
After that, get e.g. an AX3000 mini-PCIe card such as this.
If you want a USB wifi, remove the 'old' wifi card first, using the T430s manual from the HMM link above.

[ZaZ]

If the card worked before and now does not, why not just replace it? You won't have to be concerned about the whitelist with a ThinkPad branded card.

[LKJjr]

Thanks for your comments and advice...

I decided to go the "easy way." I got a usb wifi adapter (TP Link nano to connect to my TP Link router). Basically a plug-n-play install on Win10, and turned off the physical switch for the internal adapter. This performs well with excellent reception and has remedied the intermittent connection issues we'd been having.

[kfzhu1229]

Look at the "1vyrain" thread above your post, to get rid of the wifi whitelist.
After that, get e.g. an AX3000 mini-PCIe card such as this.

I guess it's worth mentioning that I actually just tried the Intel AX200 wifi card today it works just fine on my Acer Aspire 4752, so yeah it's also an option if you want mPCIe Wifi 6 card.
(I bought 3 wifi cards, one AR5b22, one RTL8821, one AX200, somehow this Acer Aspire 4752 did not like either of the 2 former wifi combo cards, where the wifi radio just can't be enabled, even though the AR5B22 is an Acer part, had no choice but to use the AX200 for bluetooth combo, where the wifi works but can't be switched off)
The AR5B22 (known as Dell Wireless 1901 if it's a Dell part) is a dirt cheap alternative really, it's 802.11 a/g/n dual band + Bluetooth 4 card, but I eventually found Acer bluetooth drivers dated in 2016 that's guarnteed to work in windows 10/11.