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2011 MacBook Air 13" - More issues than I can shake a stick at!

T

TheRealHershey

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 20, 2011
60
0
I have the 256GB w/ the Samsung SSD and Samsung Screen, btw.

Since the .1 update, I've been experiencing a ton of wifi problems. Usually once every 30 minutes (to an hour), at home, when connected to my current-gen airport extreme the wifi just stops working, yet still shows that it's connected. It doesn't seem to be an intermittent problem, because the only way to make it work again is to turn the wifi off and then back on.

I've had a lot of Mission Control graphical bugs, too. I'm having to restart 1 - 3 times a day because, while still usable, only the foreground app when MC goes off the deep end continues to respond.

All sorts of issues after coming out of sleep. Like today, every other time it's come out of sleep, clicking/tapping does nothing. The mouse still responds/moves, but clicks don't register. So back to sleep, then back out and it works.

If the battery dies/it sleeps/hibernates (?), I plug it in, press the power button, the screen turns back on and turns to a backlit back, then sits there and does nothing for minutes. I have to hold the power button down and kill it.

That's about half of the weirdnesses that have happened recently.


The fans also go nuts over nothing sometimes, too. I've reset the SMC and PRAM twice, as per the apple.com support page. I'm not sure if the SMC is actually resetting, though, since the magsafe light stays solid.

I have filevault enabled.

Also, some random settings won't stick at all; they default back all the time.

This **** is annoying and really starting to piss me off. I love Apple, but I've restarted this MBA more in the past 2 weeks than my MBP in the past year! :|

Anyone else experiencing any of these problems or have fixes for them? Thanks!
 
I'm too having the WiFI problems you mention. It seems to happen only though at the end of the routers range. The Air seems sensitive to that. :confused:

Otherwise I'm extremely pleased with it.
 
karlth said:
I'm too having the WiFI problems you mention. It seems to happen only though at the end of the routers range. The Air seems sensitive to that. :confused:

Otherwise I'm extremely pleased with it.
Click to expand...



I'm about 12 feet from my airport, so full signal strength. Haven't been connected to any other wifi long enough to see if it's happening with none-apple routers, though.

I love the Air; it's the best laptop I've ever used or owned and I wouldn't trade it for anything, but Lion is worse than Vista was when it comes to issues.
 
TheRealHershey said:
I'm about 12 feet from my airport, so full signal strength. Haven't been connected to any other wifi long enough to see if it's happening with none-apple routers, though.
Click to expand...

I'm using a Thomson router so it is not specific to Apple routers. There is also something strange going on with estimated signal strength as it almost always displays full strength, even though it is about to lose the connection.

When close to the router it doesn't seem to happen though. Then the Wifi works as expected.

I love the Air; it's the best laptop I've ever used or owned and I wouldn't trade it for anything, but Lion is worse than Vista was when it comes to issues.
Click to expand...

Please don't mention Vista, I'm still having nightmares! I do though prefer the Windows 7 UI to Lion. :eek:
 
If all this happened after the .1 update, I suggest downloading the full update from Apple's website and reinstalling it, as you seem to be experiencing a lot of unusual issues. Some of us have wi-fi issues, but nothing like what you are having.

If they were happening before the .1 update, you might have a bad logic board. I say that because I had the wake from sleep issues with my 2010 MacBook Air last year when it first came out, and that was the diagnosis from Apple (who replaced it).
 
I've been having Wifi issues - they started again late last night and persisted into this morning.

I don't know if it's right to point the finger but they seemed to start after I installed the latest, Lion-friendly version of Dropbox. It could well be a coincidence, though.

Although it's too early to say with any certainty, I did both an SMC and PRAM reset this morning and on the face it, the Wifi does seem to be better at the moment. I'm typing this at work where it's currently connected to a Billion router, the MBA seems to get on better with this than it does my Time Capsule and Airport Extreme combo at home.

When I did my SMC reset, my Magsafe LED definitely changed - maybe try it again?
 
pollaxe said:
I don't know if it's right to point the finger but they seemed to start after I installed the latest, Lion-friendly version of Dropbox. It could well be a coincidence, though.
Click to expand...

That's interesting. I have the latest Dropbox as well installed and yesterday when the Wifi went down I noticed that the Dropbox application had 24 processor threads running - a suspiciously high number.

I'll test this better later today.
 
jlluna said:
I to suffer from the wake up and the mouse is un responsive for a few seconds.
I did not have that problem with snow leopard.
Click to expand...

Lion is definitely slower at "instant on" than Snow Leopard, but the OP's issue appears to be that it freezes up entirely and requires a hard reset. It could be a firmware issue, as that was also a common issue in the 2010s until Apple released an update.
 
"I suggest downloading the full update from Apple's website and reinstalling it"

How were you able to reinstall it?
i downloaded the fully update (system currently on 10.7.1) and when i go to install it there are yellow exclamation points on the hard drive saying it can't be installed. is there some trick to force a reinstall over 10.7.1?
 
Just so you know I also have a 13" MBA 256GB with Samsung SSD and Samsung screen, and I have been having the exact same problems that you've been describing. Specifically I've been having the wifi problems, the random freezing problems, and especially the freezing-out-of-sleep problems.

I do not have filevault enabled so we can eliminate that as a source of the problem.

Do you happen to use Dropbox, Sophos, and/or JiTouch? Those are the always-running programs that I've been using, so I would be interested to know if you use any of them.

TheRealHershey said:
I have the 256GB w/ the Samsung SSD and Samsung Screen, btw.

Since the .1 update, I've been experiencing a ton of wifi problems. Usually once every 30 minutes (to an hour), at home, when connected to my current-gen airport extreme the wifi just stops working, yet still shows that it's connected. It doesn't seem to be an intermittent problem, because the only way to make it work again is to turn the wifi off and then back on.

I've had a lot of Mission Control graphical bugs, too. I'm having to restart 1 - 3 times a day because, while still usable, only the foreground app when MC goes off the deep end continues to respond.

All sorts of issues after coming out of sleep. Like today, every other time it's come out of sleep, clicking/tapping does nothing. The mouse still responds/moves, but clicks don't register. So back to sleep, then back out and it works.

If the battery dies/it sleeps/hibernates (?), I plug it in, press the power button, the screen turns back on and turns to a backlit back, then sits there and does nothing for minutes. I have to hold the power button down and kill it.

That's about half of the weirdnesses that have happened recently.


The fans also go nuts over nothing sometimes, too. I've reset the SMC and PRAM twice, as per the apple.com support page. I'm not sure if the SMC is actually resetting, though, since the magsafe light stays solid.

I have filevault enabled.

Also, some random settings won't stick at all; they default back all the time.

This **** is annoying and really starting to piss me off. I love Apple, but I've restarted this MBA more in the past 2 weeks than my MBP in the past year! :|

Anyone else experiencing any of these problems or have fixes for them? Thanks!
Click to expand...
 
I think we should start by taking a look at Dropbox.

I have the 256gb combo as well as you.
 
macfly4 said:
"I suggest downloading the full update from Apple's website and reinstalling it"

How were you able to reinstall it?
i downloaded the fully update (system currently on 10.7.1) and when i go to install it there are yellow exclamation points on the hard drive saying it can't be installed. is there some trick to force a reinstall over 10.7.1?
Click to expand...

Short of reinstalling 10.7.0 from the restore partition I don't really know. Typically, whenever point updates to OS X come out, I download the full update from Apple's site rather than use the delta updates from Software Update. I've done that ever since 10.6.6 had a nasty tendency to slow down the graphics on the 2010 MacBook Air (the full update didn't).

Given the other posts here, though, I'd start looking into Dropbox to see if that's what is causing the issue. Reinstalling OS X is a fairly radical solution.
 
tuna said:
Just so you know I also have a 13" MBA 256GB with Samsung SSD and Samsung screen, and I have been having the exact same problems that you've been describing. Specifically I've been having the wifi problems, the random freezing problems, and especially the freezing-out-of-sleep problems.

I do not have filevault enabled so we can eliminate that as a source of the problem.

Do you happen to use Dropbox, Sophos, and/or JiTouch? Those are the always-running programs that I've been using, so I would be interested to know if you use any of them.
Click to expand...


I would say that yes, most of these started after the .1 update. I think I only had to kill it once before that, and now I do have to do a hard reset about once a day.

I'm going to turn filevalut off and try resetting the SMC again.

I'm still on the old Dropbox version: 1.1.35.

I don't have Sophos, but I did install JiTouch for a day or two, but uninstalled it because single click stopped working 30% of the time, and I got tired of double clicking 70% of the time. Couldn't narrow down why I was having to double click, but it was also happening on my 2010 MBP, so I figured that it's a JiTouch problem and not related to Lion or the MBA at all. I was having the mouse out of sleep problems before I even installed JiTouch, too, so we can illuminate that...unless JiTouch left some files around somewhere which are causing more problems.

I also have TotalFinder installed, which is why Finder has crashed a few times, but I don't believe that's what is crashing Mission Control, because while they're happened at the same time, they've also happened separately, too.

Other than that, no other programs that mod any system files.

Things have been better yesterday and today, but I only used it for email/web and only for a couple of hours on and off.
 
jsolares said:
I have a toshiba SSD and LG screen and i have NONE of those problems, i guess it's the best combo after all XD

No to filevault, yes to dropbox here
Click to expand...

LOL. I have the Samsung SSD and screen, am running the latest dropbox and have none of these problems myself. My router is an older Airport Extreme (2nd gen).
 
richpjr said:
LOL. I have the Samsung SSD and screen, am running the latest dropbox and have none of these problems myself. My router is an older Airport Extreme (2nd gen).
Click to expand...

+1...same setup no issues here. Even upgraded my iMac to lion. Guestures become confusing when switching machines with lion and snow leopard lol.
 
I mean... Let's really think about this. Bear with me (rawr).

In the most extreme example: You take each "issue" you have with the 2011 MacBook Air 13" and have it etched onto the sides giant steel cubes. Font size is irrelevant.

Let's say these cubes are 20 miles high by 20 miles wide. EACH! I said miles, dammit.

You stack these cubes in the middle of Kansas (because who needs that space, really?).

That's a massive issue-ridden structure. But wait!

You charter NASA's next flight to space, and subsequently withdraw a moderately sized stick from your person. Now shake it, vigerously if you wish, at the exact location of your 2011 MacBook Air 13"-hating structure of steel perfection.

All in all, I'm just saying... you're totally over exaggerating.
 
Mr. Pink said:
I mean... Let's really think about this. Bear with me (rawr).

In the most extreme example: You take each "issue" you have with the 2011 MacBook Air 13" and have it etched onto the sides giant steel cubes. Font size is irrelevant.

Let's say these cubes are 20 miles high by 20 miles wide. EACH! I said miles, dammit.

You stack these cubes in the middle of Kansas (because who needs that space, really?).

That's a massive issue-ridden structure. But wait!

You charter NASA's next flight to space, and subsequently withdraw a moderately sized stick from your person. Now shake it, vigerously if you wish, at the exact location of your 2011 MacBook Air 13"-hating structure of steel perfection.

All in all, I'm just saying... you're totally over exaggerating.
Click to expand...

No, I'm not over exaggerating these issues. They're annoying and it totally kills productivity, because it usually goes whack when I'm trying to edit photos, but not always, so I doubt these are happening because of lightroom.
 
ZBoater said:
Nope, sorry. I am not experiencing any of these problems on my 2011 MacBook Air 13". I would recommend you have Apple take a look at it to repair it or possibly exchange it for a new one.
Click to expand...

I'll take it into the Apple store, but I already had to exchange the first one I received from them because the backlight from 3x brighter on the H key and 2x brighter on the right side.
 
wow you're having some bad luck man. ive heard of one other person having the wifi issue. i have ZERO issues with my 13" MBA. It works flawlessly and better than any computer ive ever owned. bring it back bro.
 
My 2010 13" MBA running SL works great.. "knock on wood". I just don't like how I keep getting updates related to Lion, I always cancel those. The only internet issues I have are traced back to my internet service provider, not my actual computer..

I've noticed that with cable internet.. it sometimes goes out for a split second but then your router remains F'd up for hours unless you reset it right away.. So in a nutshell.. I've found that all of my internet issues start with my service provider and end with the router. The computer is rarely the problem in my case.
 
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