EDIT: See my followup article to learn how to reverse driver_auth.exe, decrypt and encrypt dell_wwan_sysID.dat.

I bought a Dell Wireless 5530 HSPA Mini PCI card for my Dell Precision M4500 laptop.

This is a small expansion card that works together with the built in SIM card slot that is present in most Dell (Business) laptops.

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This SIM card slot is usually located near the battery compartment:

SimCardSlot

The card was installed in a few minutes since the antenna cables were present already and on my laptop I only needed to remove the backcover with just one screw.

Then I wanted to install the required software but this card is not officially supported in the M4500 (I bought this card because it was much cheaper on ebay).

So I took the driver from the M4400/Latitude E range, labeled R251153 but I got this error message when installing:

Internal error 23000. Authentification failed. The Dell Wireless 5540 HSPA Mobile Broadband Mini-Card cannot be installed on this computer

 

The problem is that the installer checks if the combination of the Mini PCI card and the laptop is authorized by Dell. For this purpose the installer extracts two custom executables to the temp folder. In my case the folder was %temp%{85A2C545-B193-4053-8F3E-BB1527A73676}.

The files are: driver_auth.exe and devcon.exe. driver_auth.exe decrypts a file that is delivered with the installation package named dell_wwan_sysID.dat.

Although it wouldn’t be very hard to patch driver_auth.exe to our likings we would need to repack it in the original msi, that in turn is packed in an Installshield .cab file.

So I figured it would be easier to patch the msi and remove the check. I used Microsoft’s Orca tool for this.

The MSI was extracted to %temp%\{A9664DEE-892B-4461-9E86-4EBAF86F69C2}\Dell Wireless HSPA Mini-Card Drivers.msi.

Here comes the step by step process:

Start the Dell installer until you get the error message above, do not click OK but leave the message on the screen.

Open this MSI file in Orca and remove the following sections:

CustomAction | Authenticate:

Orca Screenshot: CustomAction | Authenticate

InstallExecuteSequence | Authenticate

Orca Screenshot: InstallExecuteSequence | Authenticate

InstallUISequence | Authenticate:

Orca Screenshot: InstallUISequence | Authenticate

Now Save the MSI, DO NOT USE Save As but overwrite the original MSI, and Install it.

Then click OK on the Error Message from the Dell Installer and finish the install.

Final step is to reinstall the software completely by running the Dell Installer, it will notice that it’s already been installed so it will do a full install now without complaining.

That’s all folks!

Dell Mobile Broadband Manager

EDIT: If you have a Lenovo machine with a Bios WhiteList you may find a solution here
EDIT 2: See my followup article to learn how to reverse driver_auth.exe, decrypt and encrypt dell_wwan_sysID.dat.