No wifi at login screen

[crewkid89]

I work at a school where we have about 30 iMacs and several MacBooks. I am getting a new image ready for testing based on Sierra and I have come across a problem with wifi. It will not connect to a network automatically at the login screen. This is absolutely necessary since these machines are bound to an AD server. The problem only occurs after boot. If I login with a local account, it connects to wifi automatically. When I logout, it stays connected.

Is this related to the other wifi issues 10.12 is having or is this something different?

 

[OceanRider]

I have the same issue with my Mid 2011 21.5" Imac. I have tried the fixes recommended on various sites (except for resetting pram which I will try later). None has worked. My wife's 27" 5k Imac sits 5 feet from mine and she is not having the same issue. We both are using Sierra 10.12

 

[crewkid89]

I have the same issue with my Mid 2011 21.5" Imac. I have tried the fixes recommended on various sites (except for resetting pram which I will try later). None has worked. My wife's 27" 5k Imac sits 5 feet from mine and she is not having the same issue. We both are using Sierra 10.12

This is a mid 2010 iMac. I'll try pushing it to a different model to see if there's any difference. I'm guessing we'll be waiting for 10.12.1 to fix this. I also posted this question at apple's support forum so hopefully they'll know it's an issue.

 

[crewkid89]

I will be installing 10.12.1 on one of the iMacs tomorrow. Anybody notice any change since the update with this issue?

 

[archvile]

I will be installing 10.12.1 on one of the iMacs tomorrow. Anybody notice any change since the update with this issue?

On my 2015 rMBP 13", after upgrading to Sierra, the logon/password (lock) screen would always show the Wi-Fi icon as "off" (the empty baseball-diamond shape), however it was actually connected because I would receive notifications about e-mails, texts, etc when on the lock screen. After logging in, the Wi-Fi icon would revert to normal.

Are you sure the Mac is actually disconnected and not experiencing this graphical bug? Are you not able to log in even though it shows disconnected? I'm sure even with Mac it saves local credential cache, in case of network disconnect, so have you tried altering a users password while rebooting one of the Macs and seeing if it pulls the new password after reboot? Even though it shows Wi-Fi disconnected?

 

[crewkid89]

On my 2015 rMBP 13", after upgrading to Sierra, the logon/password (lock) screen would always show the Wi-Fi icon as "off" (the empty baseball-diamond shape), however it was actually connected because I would receive notifications about e-mails, texts, etc when on the lock screen. After logging in, the Wi-Fi icon would revert to normal.

Are you sure the Mac is actually disconnected and not experiencing this graphical bug? Are you not able to log in even though it shows disconnected? I'm sure even with Mac it saves local credential cache, in case of network disconnect, so have you tried altering a users password while rebooting one of the Macs and seeing if it pulls the new password after reboot? Even though it shows Wi-Fi disconnected?

The iMac model I am having issues with are in a school lab environment so I can't rely on cached logins. At the moment, on Sierra, these iMacs cannot login to network accounts. I converted one user to a local account because they couldn't login at all on wifi. Since then, I stopped pushing it out.