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Airport Process taking up CPU

e12a

e12a

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 28, 2006
1,881
0
it seems that everytime i boot up my computer after a shutdown, the airport process takes 90-100% of my CPU, and depletes the battery quickly (running unplugged). It is frustrating having to use Activity Monitor to quit the process. It should be noted that quitting "airport" does not affect my wireless connectivity.

I found this: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304798
but it only affects 10.4.8...but then again it hasnt been updated since last year, and to my knowledge I dont have 3rd party VPN installed. I also got rid of my VPN settings in Network, so hopefully that solved it. I will update with more info later.

update: removing VPN from my network preferences did not work.
 
Okay mate, give us a few more details about your machine. Are you saying that even if you disable the AirPort card, you still get this process at startup using 90% of your CPU?
 
It seems to only happen while I'm unplugged. I boot up from a cold start (not from sleep) and i open activity monitor only to find that "airport" process taking near 100% of the CPU. I have to manually quit it myself to save my battery life. It does not seem to be a problem with the magsafe plugged in, as i have restarted many times and have not seen this problem before.

I dont know how its related to the hardware airport, cause quitting the process does not affect my connectivity.

edit: read over mad jew's post, i'll restart now with airport disabled. will update in a few.
 
update: seems that the airport process doesnt show up now...

only seems to come when i connect to my university's wireless in another building..i dont get it. :confused:
 
A-ha, I'm having this problem as well. I thought that it started when I patched to the latest updates this week, but I've also installed a VPN client recently, and I've made one reboot since installing all of this stuff.

Is the process something like:

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211/airport

If you open a terminal window and type:

ps -auxwww | grep airport

you'll see the command.

I *think* that this process just manages the automatic reconnection to a wireless network when you turn on the computer. Do you find that after you've killed the process , if you sleep then wake the computer that you need to reconnect manually? I'd assumed it was to do with the Apple update, but will now try removing the VPN software to see if it fixes it, will post back what I find out...

Mark.
 
The thing is though, I'm not using a 3rd party VPN to my knowledge.

update: I am at my class that seems to cause the problem. I booted up and sure enough i see the airport taking up 99-100 of the CPU. This did not happen at my dorm, using my own wireless internet. is it something with the network in class i'm not sure.
 
another update: This time i'm at class but i woke up the computer from sleep this time. (not a full shutdown/restart). The airport process is nowhere to be found. :confused:
 
I'm getting the same thing as well. I don't have any VPN installed. I just quit the process which becomes a pain because I do it about 5 times a day....

Hopefully Apple will fix this!

Nuc
 
I have a macbook pro rev 1 running 10.4.9 and I get this sometimes too. When I was at school it never happened, but now that I am home and connected to a linksys router, it happens more frequently. I'm not really sure what is happening either.
 
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