Q: 10.6.5 and wifi issues

Yes. I do. And I don't believe it's a small percentage either.

I have a brand new Macbook (bought end Nov 2010) that has had this problem since it updated to 10.6.5 after about a month of use. Several hours on the net, an expensive call to the Apple helpline didn't solve it. A visit to my Apple shop did for a while until the latest update came out and the whole thing has fallen over again.

I went back to the Apple shop today and they tell me that this is a very common problem, they have several people in every day with it and have the same issues with their own personal machines at home. But Apple will fix it very soon....

Their attempt to fix it today has failed, so I am now tethered by ethernet cable to my router with the laptop on top of the dog's cage in the hall with me perched on a stool.

I don't call that over £1,000 well spent Apple. Do you?

I hope I may add, without fear of moderation, that this is my first experience of Mac. I've always bought windows but decided to go with the big outlay for a machine that would see us right, just plug & play for years of trouble-free use. I can't begin to describe the stress it's caused me so far. I need my laptop for work and this issue has rendered my new machine virtually unusable. I am very disillusioned.

Please Apple, sort this out!

I have posted this list of things to try before, but I have updated recently. These are gleaned from reading many posts. It does not include the recent postings on reverting your Airport card driver to a 10.6.4. I strongly recommend everyone consider the first items which have been verified on this support board as solving the problem. Not all are required, each is listed because it alone solved the problem for that user(s). For some reason the updated OS is more sensitive to wifi interference - the same environment now is causing issues and does not on earlier versions, so please check out wifi interference as a option. Same with the wifi security, recent OS updates seem intolerant of WEP security.

All the fixes;

Fixes known to have solved the problem to posters on this board
1. Verify that there are no interfering signals (other WiFi units and portable phones or microwave ovens). Change channels regardless as you can't “see” outside inference
2. Repair permissions – directions at http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1452. Use Onyx to repair to a more complete level.
3. If you have WEP security change your security to WPA or WPA2
4. Delete Keychain password http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/9078.html or create a new password on your router
5. Network Prefs - Make sure Airport is the top service on the list. Consider edititng your wifi location (remove airport service and re-install) OR create a completely new location.
6. Look for conflicting out of date or beta software (Peer Guardian, Parallels and VMFusion known issues, Sophos antivirus)
7. Make a backup and then delete network preference files, Macintosh HD -> Library -> Preferences all plists starting with com.apple.internet, then move the System Preferences folder to your desktop (as a backup) and restart your computer.
8. Flush Cache files: Navigate to this folder:/System/Library/Caches, delete all the files in this folder.
9. Mac Mini – be sure bluetooth is enabled. Confirmed disabled BT with 10.6.5 results in WIFI timeouts.

Thing that are recommended, not yet confirmed
10. Reset your PRAM– directions at http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379.
11. Reset your SMC – directions at http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964. This was suggested by Small Dog Tech Tails for many problems
12. Create a new user for the computer and set up wifi for that user
13. Network Prefs - get a new DHCP lease
14. Network Prefs – disable Ipv6
15. Manually enter your ISP DNS IP addresses in Network Preference
16. Be sure your router firmware is up to date
17. Make sure there are no IP conflicts with other devices

Troubleshooting tips to help isolate the problem:
18. Grab a Console log and post the results here, look in your system.log (viewable via Applications->Utilities->Console)
19. Set up ping to continuously poll the router as a temporary fix
20. Report bug to Apple - http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter/
You have to sign up to be a "developer" but it is free.

Thanks for that. More things for me to try if I can get motivated. At the moment I'm just Turning Off/Turning On Airport when the connection cuts out. Oh, and giving a sigh.

I came to Snow Leopard from Win98. Huh.

And my mum is having the same problem with her iPad; when the polite message about "...difficulties with your internet connection. Please try again later" my mum goes and makes some scones. I showed her how to switch off/switch on and carry on browsing, and all the lard-*** sparrows that have been hanging around can just bugger off.

So I'm interested in comment about 10.6.7 and this issue.

What a curious bit of automated censorship.

I updated my macbook last night. After restart my mac had no airport. I could get it to work if I went and sat a foot away from the wifi router. I rolled back my wifi IO80211Family.kext as tenortim was suggested and my wifi works like it should.


I want to thank tenortim for his post. And well apple fail!

This worked for me!

My MBP (2010) running 10.6.6 wouldn't connect to the network after reboot. It would get a DHCP lease (or the last lease would be applied), routes would be setup, but I couldn't ping anything without bringing en1 down then back up. Resetting everything with this method worked for me. I can now reboot without having to bounce the interface.

Hi , i have exactly the same problem .
I tried geek and non geek solutions.
I repaired permissions and did new airport connections.
Now i'm toyally bored, disappointed and furious.
I'm downgrading to Leopard and hope everything will be ok.
It's the first time i have this kind of troubles with Mac and i'm seriously upset !
Apple made the same mistake as Windows , sell a new operating System too quickly !
I Have a Mac and i don't want to have to change channels on my router or stuff like this !

I downgraded and.....ohhhhhh i have my wi fi connection !
Thank you Apple for all the time i spent and for a 49€ junk OS.

How do I downgrade or roll back? I'm a brand new Mac user.

I know how to do it on windows, am pretty 'techy' on that score, but was hoping that the double outlay on mac would mean I'd never have to know how to fiddle with the OS again. I'm not afraid to do it, but really can't be doing with the stress and aggravation. And Mac doesn't work in the same way, so this is a steep learning curve I hoped a huge sum of money would mean I'd never have to climb. My Mac is only 2 months old and has been useless for about 6 weeks of that time because it won't work with the wifi reliably. At the moment, since we updated to 10.6.6 not at all.

What a phenomenonally expensive white elephant this has turned out to be. Could not be more disappointed.

MacOSX does not have a windows like roll back. But if you set your Time Machine to backup your system, it should be as easy as that. Never tried it though but have it to backup my system too. There could be an other way too digging into receipts how they work on OSX. But I've never dug into them to check if you could trough them reinstall older "updates" and that way rollback.

But dig into /Library/Receipts/InstallHistory.plist as a beginning
Also /private/var/db/receipts

These are all hidden files for Finder so you need to know how to search for them in Finder or simply know your way around or be fluent with sh.

Thanks to tenortim, you don't have to roll back. I can verify that his solution works. Keep the system and roll back the airport driver. Here are the instructions:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=12924009#12924009

The fix is here (thanks tenortim)
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=12924009#12924009

I tried this fix three times and it didn't work at all for me - what could I be doing wrong? I made a backup, then removed the original directory, "mv" the extracted directory from the Combo, ran the Kext Utility and rebooted and still get an Airport firmware of Artheros 2.1.14.5.

I have also followed tenortim's method and when I tried the Kext utility it told me the driver had not been correctly installed and refused to run further. So I re-booted and tried running the Kext utility again - it ran and reported all was well.

Now running 10.6.6 with
Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x168C, 0x86)
Firmware Version: Atheros 5424: 2.0.19.10

and wifi continues to work perfectly on the Bootcamp/XP side of the machine (and on the PowerBook G4 under Leopard, and on my iPod Touch and my son's iPhone) but NOT on the OS X side, where I still get "Connection time-out" or "connection failed" whenever I try to connect.

BUT if I am in XP and re-boot to OS X I can connect, ONCE ONLY, and after the connection disappears for some unfathomable reason after some time (I've not had the patience to time it but it must be between half an hour and an hour) I can no longer connect.

So it doesn't look as if any amount of repairing permissions, Onyx, deleting plist files etc., all of which I've tried n times, will do the slightest bit of good.

So I conclude that I can connect the Airport card from XP, re-connect ONCE ONLY from OS X and that that or the first disconnection breaks something or leaves some false data somewhere - where?

And this irrespective of which Atheros driver I am using. By the way I also had exactly the same phenomenon after re-loading Snow Leopard from scratch and before applying any updates.

About Apple spending effort to roll out Appstore rather than on this issue - I suspect the people involved are completely different and that it really is a question of Apple as a company not taking this issue seriously enough early enough.