Solved! Can I remove wifi card antenna and just use a external wifi dongle on my laptop?

[casperkaye]

My HP Pavilion laptop hinges finally broke off and it will cost to much to replace the them. So I am hooking the laptop up to a monitor. The screen has been removed from the base (by the computer repair place I sent it to) and the WiFi antenna is still attached to the screen and not the laptop base. So I either reattach it to the base and try to disconnect it from the screen, or use a WiFi adapter. I have been reading up on the WiFi adapters and I am unsure if it will work if the WiFi card antenna is disconnected. Any suggestions?

 

[MikeNettleton]

You don't need to do anything physically - just install the WiFi adapter.

 

[COLGeek]

Sure, you could use a USB Wi-Fi adapter. I would recommend you disable the on-board Wi-Fi adapter if you do this.

 

[AlHuneke]

A couple of options. If you are handy at taking your machine apart, you could remove the antenna from the display and hook if back into the wifi card on the motherboard and just let it hang outside the machine. Or you could remove the WiFi card from the motherboard (most of the time these are separate little boards) and use an external WilFi adapter. Or you could just leave things as they are and plug in the external adapter. I agree with the previous comment that it would be good to disable the internal wifi. You can go to Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network Connections, select your old wifi adapter and disable it there.

 

[casperkaye]

Thanks for your answers. I will start by just adding the adapter.