wireless is all sorts of screwey on my new powerbook.

[Micr0korg]

I had just gotten a 15 inch Powerbook G4 –straight from an apple store. It was working beautifully. I was able to connect to the wireless networks at all of my friends houses. After about a week, while surfing on the internet, I had lost the connection. Not the wireless signal though, It still said I was connected to my network (a fairly good signal), but no internet. My old pc laptop was still working, as were all the other computers on the network.

after restarting my computer, My powerbook couldn't detect any networks (when usually there's about 3 of them). But this is off and on, sometimes my home network will show up and then it'll dissapear. Sometimes I'm even able to connect to the internet for a small ammount of time. But it is still really bad.

The only time it really works is if I'm in the same room as the wireless access point, and sometimes I even have to be sitting right next to it! But I've found that now even sitting next to it, My powerbook cannot detect the network.

Im not sure if it is a problem with the airport extreme card, or the antenna or something, or if its a problem with my computer (I remember the name of the network used to scroll near the airport icon in the menu bar. This doesn't happen anymore...)

I've tried reseating the airport card, no help (I probably just broke it even more...), I've updated all my software, and I ran norton virus scans etc., soo... I don't know... I have the applecare protection plan but I think that's a last resort for me, I don't feel like taking my laptop back to the apple store and waiting who knows how long it takes for them to fix it.

Sooo, any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[agentphish]

I have had similar problems with the airport wireless card in my PB15.

It seems to be very flaky. What i have found is that i must make a network location for each place I am at. Then sometimes it will work right without me havin to do anything. Other times however, i must go into the network preferences settings (under apple menu>location>network preferences) then under the show menu I hit Airport.. Then hit the TCP/IP tab. then I assign my computer an IP address and hit renew ip. and at this point it works flawlessly. I have linksys at my house, my girlfriends house and my parents house. All three have the same router 802.11B. The school I go to uses ALL airports. I even have this problem there and with them all I have to do is renew the IP, dont have to manually assign an IP.

Hope this helps, its how i've managed to get around this quirk... I'd assume that you should be able to set your location to AUTOMATIC and have it just work right... well that would be too logical now wouldn't it apple.

Peace.

 

[greenleaf]

i have the same problem with my pb15 aswell...maybe there is something wrong with the networking on some of these.also the is about 7 computers on my home network and i have an xbox running live so i wonder if that has anything to do with it

 

[Micr0korg]

Thanks for the suggestion, didn't quite work though... I think my problem has got to be more with the antenna now then... I dunno... I think i'll just bring it into the apple store... anyone know how long it usually takes for a repair?