Late 2014 Mini Wifi Problem

[ParishM]

i recently bought a new Mac Mini (latest model) that came with
El Capitan on a 1TB 5400rpm drive. i immediately swapped it out
with a Samsung 850 EVO PRo SSD and restored a time machine
backup (Yosemite 10.10.5) from my old Mini. for the last month
everything has worked perfectly, yesterday i tried connecting to
a wifi Eye-Fi memory card and the wifi sees all available wifi
networks but will not connect to anything. all phones and multiple
laptops in the house connect to the wifi router with no problems
so i know it's not the router. this is the first time i have tied using
wifi on the Mini as it's normally hardwired to the router.

on a whim i booted to the 1TB drive that came with the Mini
running El Capitan via USB and now the wifi connects just fine.

seeing as the late 2014 Mini originally shipped with Yosemite and
there have been no hardware updates i don't understand why
the wifi will not connect using Yosemite ?

Apples loophole is they "don't support" downgrading OS

 

[jpietrzak8]

Just curious, is there a reason why you don't want to use the Mini's built-in wifi?

 

[ParishM]

Just curious, is there a reason why you don't want to use the Mini's built-in wifi?

i'm talking about the built in wifi, it won't connect to anything using
Yosemite.

 

[jpietrzak8]

i'm talking about the built in wifi, it won't connect to anything using
Yosemite.

Oh! I thought you were using the Eye-fi from the Mini's built-in card reader.

I'm guessing you're trying to make a direct ("ad-hoc") connection to the Eye-fi card? I think Yosemite (by default) doesn't support encrypted ad-hoc connections, which might be the problem. If you can set up the Eye-fi card to use "infrastructure" mode (to go through your router), that might work better...

EDIT: Oops, you're saying it won't connect to anything? Ok, hmm. Have you already configured the Mini to use your router's wireless system? (Since wired and wireless protocols are different, they need different configurations...)

 

[ParishM]

it's not just the Eye-Fi card, it won't connect to my wifi router either
running Yosemite. if i run El Capitan it connects fine.

 

[jpietrzak8]

it's not just the Eye-Fi card, it won't connect to my wifi router either
running Yosemite. if i run El Capitan it connects fine.

Yeah, sorry, I misread. I edited my previous post, but let me ask again: since your Yosemite setup is an entirely different install of OS X from your El Capitan setup, they won't be sharing information with each other. So even if you had set up El Capitan to use your router's wireless network, you'll need to set it up all over again for Yosemite. (If you've always had it using ethernet, I would imagine you might not have bothered to set it up before.)

 

[ParishM]

Yeah, sorry, I misread. I edited my previous post, but let me ask again: since your Yosemite setup is an entirely different install of OS X from your El Capitan setup, they won't be sharing information with each other. So even if you had set up El Capitan to use your router's wireless network, you'll need to set it up all over again for Yosemite. (If you've always had it using ethernet, I would imagine you might not have bothered to set it up before.)

ok again you're not understanding what i'm saying

running Yosemite, it sees the wifi router SSID but will not connect using the
right password. if i boot to an El Capitan drive it will connect to the same router.

Apple is trying to tell me that my Mini was designed to run El Capitan and
i said that's BS and it only shipped with El Capitan because Yosemite was
discontinued. the late 2014 Mini's originally came with Yosemite until El Capitan
was released and there were no hardware changes. so basically if it worked
with Yosemite previously it should still work !

 

[jpietrzak8]

running Yosemite, it sees the wifi router SSID but will not connect using the right password. if i boot to an El Capitan drive it will connect to the same router.

But it will work using ethernet, right? Ok, so the problem is not networking as a whole, but specifically the wireless system. Hmm. Sometimes, there can be incompatibilities in the type of encryption used on either side of a wireless connection. I think the next thing I would try is to temporarily turn off the wifi security on the router, and see if Yosemite can connect without a password.

If that works, then I would try out the various encryption options offered by the router, and see which ones work and which ones do not with Yosemite.

Also, you can check if the router has any firmware updates available; I've managed to fix router incompatibility options several times by pulling down a fix from the manufacturer...

so basically if it worked with Yosemite previously it should still work !

Absolutely! Heck, I'm still running Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) on one of my Minis, and it works just fine with my wireless router.

 

[ParishM]

the problem is Yosemite, not the router. it connects fine using El Capitan but
not Yosemite. i didn't realize it at first because i seldomly use the Mini's wifi,
it's always connected over ethernet. it's some kind of driver or software issue.
Yosemite is backwards compatible with everything except the wifi card, bluetooth
works perfectly too.

 

[jpietrzak8]

the problem is Yosemite, not the router.

Ah, I'm trying to say that the problem may be neither Yosemite nor the router. You said that, under Yosemite, you could see all the available wireless networks, but could not connect to them with a password.

Therefore, Yosemite is perfectly compatible with the Mini's wireless, and is perfectly capable of connecting to the router (otherwise it could not report the router's existence).

There are innumerable encryption mechanisms available; "WEP", "WPA", "WPA2", and many others. Each of these encryption mechanisms in turn have multiple variants and versions, and different implementations by different manufacturers. It is quite possible that the variant of the encryption mechanism you've currently chosen on your router is not perfectly compatible with the corresponding variant on Yosemite, but may be compatible with the corresponding variant on El Capitan (due to a better driver for that manufacturer, perhaps).

This is why I was suggesting trying to turn off encryption on the router; if the problem went away, then the encryption method would be the issue here.

If this is the case, you could try changing the encryption mechanism; from "WPA2" to "WPA", for example. Or, if the router manufacturer has a firmware update, that could make their encryption mechanism more broadly compatible.

Anyway, just an idea.