MacBook Wireless Not Working Properly

[eboyer7]

Hi. Starting about 4 months ago my 3 year-old 2.0GHz Core Duo MacBook's wireless started to not work very well. What was happening is that after starting the computer or waking it from sleep, it was able to connect to my network, but after about 5 seconds it would lose the signal despite being physically very close to the router without anything to block the signal. The problem progressively got worse, and at its worst it was only able to connect about 1 in 10 times. Either it wouldn't find the network at all, or it would find it but couldn't connect because "The connection timed out" or something like that.

I never bothered fixing the problem because my Mac was having a bunch of other issues at the time, so I was just going to fix them all by doing a fresh install of Snow Leopard once it came out.

So 3 days ago I did a fresh install of Snow Leopard (I formatted the harddrive then did a fresh install, not an archive and install). Unfortunately, it only kinda helped the wireless problem: I can now connect half the time rather than 1 in 10 times like it used to be.

I'm quite sure my network isn't the problem because everyone that has used my network in the recent past (which has been about 10 different PCs, Macs, and iPhones) hasn't had any problems. FYI, I have a Linksys WRT54G wireless router.

So, does anyone have any idea what the problem is? Is my MacBook's wireless card dying?

-Eric

 

[lawrenciumbc]

Same problem

It sounds very much like the problem im having, i've only had my macbook for 1 year now and this problem has only started in the last 2 days.

Mine can find and connect to my router as it claims its connected but there is no internet connection. If i disable then enable airport or when i first turn it on sometimes it will load 1 page then the blue bar only gets a third of the way and then it says it cannot connect to the server.

I bet its a simple problem but its annoying......

 

[stuiephoto]

Any similarities to this thread? Im having internet issues as well, slightly different than yours though.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/783326/

 

[eboyer7]

This problem looks kinda similar to the other thread, although I don't use torrents. My internet/network problems happen with anything (any Safari webpage, iTunes store, FTP, networked computers, etc).

Does anyone have Bootcamp installed? If so do you have similar problems there? Or, by chance, does anyone have an older version of OSX (pre-Leopard) installed on another partition where you can test to see if it's just Leopard and Snow Leopard? I'm planning on installing Bootcamp sometime in the next few days, so I'll tell you what I find then.

 

[Superdelphinus]

I've had this issue for about 6-9 months now. It seems a very common problem. I have windows 7 on bootcamp and it doesn't work through there either which suggests it is some sort of hardware problem. It works on every other network, just not my home one. 2 PCs and an iPhone can also connect with no problems. It's totally infuriating and apple obviously deny it's anything to do with them. I did have it fixed for about 3 months or so by ringing the router people (who were a 100 times more helpful than apple) and I changed the frequency that the router was broadcasting at. That worked immiediately. Has just started doing it again so will give them another ring.

It seems that the airport card completely spazzes out when there are too many different wireless signals about. Which is completely **** when you think that a £350 dell machine has never had any problems at all. "it just works" my arse

 

[Nocebo13]

Possible Solution

I posted a fix at this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=10708990#post10708990

But I'll re-post it here for convenience:

So I had the same problem many of you had: after a year or so without error, airport began saying that I was connected to a network, even though I wasn't getting any access to the internet.

After a long troubleshoot with an Apple guy, I have found at least one fix to this problem. This fix will be for those who are confident their problem isn't hardware. sorry Superdelphinus :/

Solution: First of all, Snow Leopard caches all the networks you've ever accessed (unless you've changed that particular option). Now for some reason, when you have accessed a fairly large number of networks, the bug comes up where you continue to "connect" to networks without actually connecting to the internet.

In order to remedy this issue you need to delete your cache of wireless networks.

To do this, first go to the Network menu in System Preferences. Highlight the Airport device in the box to the left for network devices and then go to advanced options. In this options menu make sure you are on the "Airport" tab. Once you are there, select all the networks that are listed in the Preferred Networks box and click the minus button to delete the cache of networks. With luck, this should free up your wireless.

If your internet isn't working immediately, I would recommend simply restarting your modem and router if you have access to them.