Macbook airport card (dying)?

eliotschreiner said:

Hey guys, my mother bought a black macbook about 15 months ago (so it's out of warranty), and it seems the airport card in it is losing strength. If she tries to connect from any more than 10 feet away, it can only get a few pages before the signal drops out. What might be the best thing to do at this point? Has anyone else had this problem?

Thanks,
Eliot

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I'm not saying that the Airport Card isn't the culprit, but I would doubt it. Unless the antenna connection is loose, I would more expect it to work, or not work.

Has your mom introduced anything in the house that could interfere with the signal? A new cordless phone, perhaps? Maybe someone in the neighborhood has a wi-fi network that is interfering.

I would try an select a different channel on her basestation before doing anything drastic.

Good Luck!

This happens @ my house also. Have you tried resetting the router/modem?

Agreed

Mine does the same thing. I will have full bars and then it will crash to 2 bars.

BDogbz said:

Mine does the same thing. I will have full bars and then it will crash to 2 bars.

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Yeah, my friend's Macbook has the same issue. Trying to diagnose it now.

GeneralAntilles said:

Yeah, might friend's Macbook has the same issue. Trying to diagnose it now.

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No apparent explanation inside the machine. Antenna cables are attached soundly and seem to be in good shape. Will try updating to Snow Leopard first (on Tiger now) and then swap in a new card if that doesn't improve things.

Summary, after turning on the computer you can connect to a wireless network at a reasonable distance from the router. After connecting, however, the signal strength drops bar-by-bar one bar every 2-3 seconds until the network is disconnected completely. In order to reconnect you must place yourself within about 10 feet of the router.

This is the only piece of WiFi hardware affected by this condition. All of the other half-dozen devices using the network have no problems with signal strength or connectivity. It is definitely not the router at fault (Linksys WRT54G running Tomato).