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Airport Problems Getting Worse

B

bimmerchop

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 15, 2007
217
0
Well, this is really getting on my nerves. I've had my mbp since this past august and from the beginning I used to have the airport issue most are aware of where you lose your connection to your router even though the airport signal bar shows it being connected and at full strength. It was a minor inconvenience since the temporary fix for it, at least for me, would be to turn airport off and then on again.

Then Apple releases an airport update not too long ago. Great... or so I thought. The update made matters worse. Not only do I still have the same problem, but it has gotten a lot worse. I can no longer turn airport off/on again to regain a connection. Now I have to restart the computer.

So I go an install leopard thinking that it might be fixed in leopard... but low and behold, still have the same problem. This is really pissing me off now. Not only is it annoying to drop the connection, especially while downloading a file (I drop it now on average of 3-5x a day at least), but when it drops, I have to go and restart the computer everytime if I want airport to work. Not good for the mbp itself if you ask me :mad:

When the hell is apple going to fix this once and for all... So many people have this same problem, and yet, no fix from apple for it.

Question though; Do people still have this issue if they're using an airport extreme base station router? If not, I think I might just give in and get one... which sucks a lot. I shouldn't have to be buying additional hardware
 
I had some connetion problems with my Santa Rosa 17" MBP.

Got Airport Extreme Gigabit. No more problems with it.

(Very annoying problem because it can't be demonstrated in the store, because they have Airport Extreme. Reports are 10.4.9 didn't have problem, however Santa Rosa comes with 10.4.10 and cannot be downgraded.)

You need to tell Apple your problem:
apple.com/feedback
 
Airport issues...

There is some good advice about the airport issue here in the macrumors forum pages, one of the few hints that work are: doing an archive and install, another to do a clean install, some more benign fixes include: deleting the airport configuartion.plist, networkconfiguration.plist,directoryutility.plist and directory.plist from you library>preferences. Leopard is very poor in handling migrated files or upgraded prefs, you need to make all new prefs under Leo's environment, under the network pane make a new location like"home" and configure your airport from there, turn off ipv6, under the DNS tab input your router address and any other dns servers that appear on your router info page when you log in to alter settings. Also the airport signal icon now represents data rate and not signal strength, hence it may be communicating with the router but not connected to the net. Some have found that by doing a hard reset on their routers have solved a lot of issues, some simply by unpluggin the router for a few seconds.
 
take a look at this old Tiger connectivity article...

One of the most successful workarounds for this issue involves deleting networks and AirPort keychains then re-establishing them, as described here and in our tutorial "Improving AirPort reception, avoiding dropouts/lost connectivity, working around card/Base station recognition issues."
Now some users have reported that deleting the following file: /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
can resolve the issue.
MacFixIt reader Matthew Powell writes:
"I updated my Mac Mini Core Duo from 10.4.6 to 10.4.7 and had an AirPort problem. After a reboot, the machine appeared to associate to the access point, but didn't get a DHCP address. The interface got a self-assigned address instead. The 'Renew DHCP Address' button had no effect.
"I was able to get connectivity back by selecting 'Other...' from the AirPort menu, then re-entering my SSID and password. But connectivity was lost again after a reboot.
"I ended up deleting /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences.plist and the System keychain entry for my AirPort, and then reconfiguring AirPort. I'm still connected after a reboot."
link to this article here:http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=2005093011343164
 
Thanks guys, but I've already tried some of these fixes, but nothing fixes this. I did a fresh install of leopard, but nothing. I also just went to check the /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences.plist to delete it, but it's not there. Heck, I don't even have a system configuration folder in my preferences folder... is it not suppose to be there in leopard?

Now, the more I play with leopard, the more annoying bugs I find. First, the illuminated keyboard seems to be a lot more sensitive. I find it going on and off as I move my hand to type, so I go to check off the option so it doesn't automatically illuminate itself, but it doesn't stay. As soon as I close the system preferences box, it just automatically starts illuminating itself all over again. Not to mention, after a few minutes of the computer not being used, the screen goes black. In the energy saver menu, I have the automatically reduce screen brightness unchecked so it doesn't do this, but it still does. It's weird though, because the screen doesn't dim like in tiger. It seems like the LED lighting just turns instantly off, and if you look closely at the screen, you can still see open windows/wallpaper, etc... Not to mention restarting it now takes longer as well and I find my start up screen acting a bit weird in "twitching" between different shades of blue.

Ugh!! I'm going crazy over here
 
There are at least 2 Preferences folders, 1 for your user, 1 for the system. Just do a search for it.
 
I did, but I can't find anything. Here is my preference folder, you can see all of it's contents...



2nd half of the folder...



As you see, theres nothing there. And when I searched for the system folder and opened it, it was completely empty, no files, not folders, nothing...
 
command shift + G


type: /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/

didn't work for me tho, airport admin utility can't even find my airport now
 
just now had issues...

I just had issues connecting, I left my router and my modem off, since I was at work since 5 am, upon starting my system the connection would drop like crazy, I would disconnect the router and cold boot it or restart the modem and still it would drop, the only thing that made it work was to disconnect both, I did a hard reset on the modem first, connected, once that was running I reconnected the router, now all systems work, I bet it has to do with Leopard not logging off or not disconnecting properly from its external devices specially the routers and modems, this may be an upgrade fix soon, I can relate to you but if you read some of my articles elsewhere, I advise to have a start implementing a more methodical way of trying out all these new OSs. This may not sound like help at this moment but it will help you when another main OS upgrade comes out. In my main system I did not install Leo, Im using an external USB Sata drive to try it out first, it has saved me enough grief, Tiger has been running 98% flawlessly on my Mini, so Im in no rush to get into bug haven, I already did that when I upgraded from Panther, the same issues occur time and time again, please folks! avoid hampering your productivity by becoming beta testers, the lure of Leo is great but it can be frustrating as you can read from our forum buddies here. I surely hope you get your system running properly. If anything try installing Tiger back to keep working and try and get a small external drive to test Leo out. you will make yourself crazy by waiting for the upgrades and patches, just know there are plenty of folk who are experiencing the same issues and the fix will come soon, no doubt.
 
Mlobo01 said:
in one of the folders the files are:com.apple.internetconfig.plist,also; com.apple.internetconfigpriv.plist...
Click to expand...

did so, but it didn't didn't fix anything. Regardless though, should I have a system configuration folder in there? I searched for it, but came up with nothing. Somehow, it doesn't exist...
 
try this...

Try doing an archive and install through your Leo installation disc, when the dialog box comes out just select "Customize" from the bottom selection button and just install the BSD, upon doing this it will install the basic files you could be missing. If this fails it could be the installation disc itself, atempt to borrow someone elses and see if that works, if for some reason you have opened up your computer to upgrade or if you have sent it out to get upgraded, one problem that has bitten me is the Airport card connector, in my mac mini after the HD upgrade it got disconnected since the plug that connects the card is very small and fragile, I had to go back, open it and reconnected it, hopefully its just a software issue. One other option that has worked for me is to obtain the missing files through another working computer, sort of like a graft, I did fix Tiger's sleep issue (10.4.3-.4) by taking the powermanagementbundle from my laptop and inserting it in the proper folder,fixed permissions etc and it did work as long as its the same version or one prior version. It does help to have 2 computers, at one time a had three(imac bondi,pwerbook and albook)
 
this just in...

this is from macosxhints...
In trying to use our Macbook (with Leopard) wirelessly at the local University library, we encountered a problem. They have a captive portal such that the connection to the wireless system has no password, but you must authenticate via your web browser. The Macbook connected to the wifi system, or at least it claimed it did, but no actual connection was established, and of course, the captive portal was never activated. After some trial and error with the university's IT people (who told me that they had seen this same problem with a few Leopard Macbooks and Macbook Pros, but never with Tiger or with non-Macs), we figured out a workaround.
What you do is create another Location (we called ours "Kludge"), and leave it at the default settings. With that location selected, the airport worked flawlessly, the captive portal activated, and everything was wonderful again.
My suspicion is that the Automatic location can get munged somehow, possibly if third-party network devices are installed. We had installed a Novatel CDMA modem on that machine in the Automatic location. Anyway, once Automatic gets broken, then it could fail in subtle ways such as what I described. Setting up a new location gives the system a tabular rasa to work with, and in this case, it was sufficient to solve the problem.
link:http://www.macosxhints.com/
 
I had similar problems and tried all the "walk arounds" and fixes. I called Apple Care and they had be do a bunch of things that did not work. They even had me send in my computer to have the Airport Card replaced which didn't work. Then .. .. finally .... I did a fresh install of Leopard and all is well... This drove me crazy for 2 months ... Everyone was saying ... "it's a Mac not a PC ... you don;t have to do a fresh install". Well I say BS.

Cheers.
 
Airport issues...

I agree, I did an archive and install and all is well now. For some reason migrated files and settings do not cross over succesfully, reading some of the console log files shows that the issues that affect airport connectivity or system performance are due to the inability of Utility Disc to change the permissions on certain cache folders therefore old Tiger caches become too corrupt to change or purge out, a task that I had to do manually. Doing a clean install is better since the upgrade mode from Tiger is too troublesome, I figure that it was optimized for it instead of regular upgrade. I'am still testing Leopard on my external Sata drive and most of the glitches have been mitigated, but questions still abound, the Firewall issue, the permissions warnings or modifications, cpu issues and temperature etc. but whenever I revert back to Tiger it seems that Im missing out on something, Leopard with all of its glitches is proving to be very alluring specially when it runs well.
 
bad news today...

I restarted my computer and the airport icon showed full bars but I could not connect to the internet, since the airport icon shows data rate now instead of signal strength my machine was connected to the router but was unable to load pages etc, I did all of the hints I suggested to no avail, I think the quicktime update broke my connection, it was running well before that...any fixes I make I will post just in case.
 
Got it back...

Got the wireless back and the thing is I do not know exactly what made it pick up the connection, I deleted prefs and plist files, made new locations in the network pane, deleted keychains, reverted back to 10.5 by an archive and install, did a manual ip setting, I even started Pinging the router, after a few hours of reading forums and posts and my last Pinging retry the connection just resucitated!? I know that it failed after the security and the Quicktime updates. Im installing the 10.5.1 update from the Apple site and not from the Software Update app sans the QT and Security updates. It could of been a combination of things but I still do not know
 
Wireless network not remembered...again...

I got the connectivity back but it would lose the connection and the settings once it went to sleep, it would not remember and when I would open the network panel it seemed the all the settings had been lost or deleted, I tried again the usual culprits and the thing that made it snap back was deleting the security key in the Keychain App. I also tried a new location but instead of calling it what I was calling my secondary location I tried a 3rd different name, so as to not fall into corrupt plist files again. now I've tried it and even after reboot and sleep it still conects on its own. Since I've been trying Leopard on an external drive I wont be installing it on my internal drive just yet, just like when I was testing Tiger I upgraded my internal when it became 10.4.3. I dont think its all there yet.
 
Connectivity...

I just looked at the firewall logs and it registered the folowing message:Dec 19 21:40:25 Mac-Mini Firewall46: Deny configd data in from 192.168.0.1:67 uid = 0 proto=17
The IP address above is my wireless router's address. so the firewall is indeed blocking the connection from my router.
you may obtain this information by going to System prefs>security>Firewall>Advanced>enable login.
I found this hint on how to disable the blocking, Im testing it now so look out for further posts:
http://discussions.apple.com/messageview.jspa?messageID=5993303&stqc=true
Also macrumors has posted that Apple has seeded to developers an update (10.5.2) standing at a titanic 350Mbs
 
Another hint...

Is to open keychain Access and by selecting your network password>select access control and set it so it could be accessed by all applications.
Also I set the computer to sleep and it regain the connection on its own, maybe its as simple as this?
 
One more thing...

I loaded the wireless strength widget from the folks that make istat, and by elevating my router above the computer I was able to get 10-15% more signal strength, I raised about 4 feet above. It is snappier
 
some other thing...

Update and an old hint...
The connection had no problems, when I would put it to sleep and wake it up it would find the appropriate network, except when the computer went to sleep on its own, then upon waking it, it would not find the network, there was something else missing, since we all have narrowed down that one of the connectivity issues (Wire and wireless) is due to a firewall anomaly It actually made me remember that early Panther 10.3 had a Firewall issue as well, we could not alter the firewall settings and ports because the feature was locked or greyed out, so in a forum like this one it was figured out that Panther had by default 2 firewalls active: (ipfw) and the one from Sys Prefs, this little bug could of creeped out again in Leopard, so I managed to input in the Terminal App the following command:sudo ipfw flush , entered my password then input y for yes. this flushes any rules set by the 'other' firewall, This could of been creating conflict by blocking the router's connection protocol. If we set rules with one it would be difficult to set rules for the ipfw that I believe it only accesible through Terminal, ipfw as we've seen in Console still has it own log file. After I did the flush command I restarted and tested to see if it retain the connectivity, then when the computer fell asleep on its own, it did reconnect to my network!, after several restarts it connected and when I put it to sleep manually it reconnected also. I wont cry Voila just yet, but I would like to read of others trying these hints.
 
Overnight...

I left the computer to sleep on its own, and this morning my mini lost connectivity, I went to test my laptop and it picks up my network instantly.
So im back to square one but I do feel that answer is closer than before.
 
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