Totally Perplexed Please Help Guide What To Try Now

[1108274]

I am working with a 2011 Macbook Pro 17"

All of a sudden both WIFI & Ethernet goes out and don't see services in network prefs. Only way to connect to internet on computer is by tethering my iPhone.

Opened up and made sure connections were tight and everything looked okay. Reinstalled High Sierra still the same. Reformatted HD and fresh installed Sierra same - Did it again and installed El Capiton Still the same.

It was at this point I was thinking I needed to replace hardware when........

Took out a USB Drive with a old Backup I took with Carbon Copy Cloner that has Sierra as the OS and booted from the external drive. Everything came up and works perfectly.

Can't be hardware but why will it not work when I fresh install any of the versions of OS X?

Anyone?

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"Took out a USB Drive with a old Backup I took with Carbon Copy Cloner that has Sierra as the OS and booted from the external drive. Everything came up and works perfectly."

In my opinion, your solution is "right in front of you".

Do this:
1. Boot from the CCC backup
2. Verify that you're booted from the backup
3. Check wifi and ethernet once more to assure yourself that BOTH are working as intended, then...
4. Open Disk Utility and ERASE the internal drive. That's right, NUKE IT.
5. Close DU and re-open CCC.
6. Now, RE-clone the contents of the external drive BACK TO the internal drive.
7. When done, power down, disconnect backup, reboot internal drive, go to startup disk preference pane and re-designate the internal as the boot drive, and then recheck the wifi and ethernet functions.

Do that, then get back to us.

Oh.. ONE OTHER THING.
If you have some files currently on the internal (that you created since the last CCC backup), I suggest you copy them to another drive first (USB flash drive would probably work).
Otherwise, they'll get nuked as well. They don't exist on the backup, since it can only reflect the "state of your drive" the last time you backed up...

 

[1108274]

OP wrote:
"Took out a USB Drive with a old Backup I took with Carbon Copy Cloner that has Sierra as the OS and booted from the external drive. Everything came up and works perfectly."

In my opinion, your solution is "right in front of you".

Do this:
1. Boot from the CCC backup
2. Verify that you're booted from the backup
3. Check wifi and ethernet once more to assure yourself that BOTH are working as intended, then...
4. Open Disk Utility and ERASE the internal drive. That's right, NUKE IT.
5. Close DU and re-open CCC.
6. Now, RE-clone the contents of the external drive BACK TO the internal drive.
7. When done, power down, disconnect backup, reboot internal drive, go to startup disk preference pane and re-designate the internal as the boot drive, and then recheck the wifi and ethernet functions.

Do that, then get back to us.

Oh.. ONE OTHER THING.
If you have some files currently on the internal (that you created since the last CCC backup), I suggest you copy them to another drive first (USB flash drive would probably work).
Otherwise, they'll get nuked as well. They don't exist on the backup, since it can only reflect the "state of your drive" the last time you backed up...

I'm on it now.

TY for help I will report back
[doublepost=1511892264][/doublepost]Your answer was so simple and I could not figure out why I didn't think of it until I started to do it. I then remember the issue. This clone was made when I removed optical and placed my original drive in place and put a 500G ssd as primary drive. Clone is 750G so the answer is still simple but tedious. I just need to decide if I am going to go buy a drive or backup drive 2 and make it drive 1 before proceeding. Task for the patient person which I am not so I think I'm off to get a drive as you never have enough storage anyway.