Why does my iMac G4 no longer detect any networks?

[qatipay]

Here is the story: I bought an airport card for my iMac, installed it, and it worked fine for about a month. (connecting via Linksys router in the next room) Then it stopped detecting my network or any of the surrounding neighborhood networks. None at all. My Powerbook still gets on my network with no trouble, as does my roommate's PC.

I swapped the airport cards between the Powerbook and the iMac just to make sure the problem was not the card itself. Powerbook still fine, iMac still not seeing any networks. I've reset the router a couple of times, changed the channel the router was on, and checked and rechecked to make sure the antenna is inserted properly in the airport card. Using WPA security.

Any suggestions would be really appreciated. This is totally frustrating! Thanks in advance.

 

[marcg007]

Not sure if this will be helpful or not but...

If you pull up about this mac and click on get more info (or whatever it is called), you can check to see if the card is in fact being recognized. It it isn't, then the problem could be that it is not sitting in the slot exactly correctly or there could be a problem with the connector on the iMac. Could you give some more details about your iMac OS version, total RAM, speed, etc? Could be helpful for additional troubleshooting. I'll keep checking back on this thread to see what others offer and that might trigger something else for me. Good luck.

 

[qatipay]

The card is definitely recognized -- it comes up in system profiler & it shows up in the menu bar, but grayed out, with no signal.

I'm using OS 10.3.9, 512 MB RAM, 1.25 ghz processor.

Could the antenna cable itself be the problem, since the card isn't? Or would a damaged cable cause it to not recognize the card at all? Initially I hadn't inserted the cable properly but I figured that out pretty quickly, and after that it worked fine for awhile. Then it disconnected from the internet out of nowhere, and when I tried to get back on the network it failed a couple of times and then ceased seeing any networks at all.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Melle]

I hate digging up old dirt, but I was wondering if you ever found a fix for this problem.

I also have an iMac G4 (17", 800Mhz), and some time ago, out of nowhere, my airport stopped finding any networks to connect to (I have about 8 WiFi networks available around me). No matter where I place the iMac, it just won't find any available networks. I've opened it up to make sure the antenna's properly connected, which it does appear to be...

Anyone?

And yes, I will go out and buy a new Mac... eventually. I just really want to keep this little baby around for a while.

 

[max¥¥]

have you tried running network diagnostics when you open safari?

 

[ewilson6]

ok this is a dumb answer but is airport turned on?

did you try resetting pram?