Q: mac osx 10.9 Mavericks wifi issue

Just adding my brief experience with this problem.  For last two months using refurb rMBP 13", early 2013, 2.6GHz, OSX version 10.9.4 build 13E28.  Previously using MacMini without any WiFi problems.  There are three WiFi networks in this building.  A Cisco Airnet 2.5GHz, Airport Extreme running 2.4 and 5 GHz, Airport Express 2.4GHz g.

I was not having any problems with WiFi until today when it kept dropping connection to the Cisco network and would not automatically connect to any network.  I tried the early remedy suggestion by deleting wifi settings, switch off wake from sleep, deleting Keychain airport entries and repair permissions from recovery drive (only iBooks and Safari permissions repaired - no airport etc).  THIS DID NOT WORK.

Then I remembered that I had taken the rMBP into Apple Genius bar at the weekend to deal with a slow write issue to the SD reader.  The Apple Genius was very knowledgable and helped resolve the SD reader problem.  He had connected the rMBP to store servers with a Thunderbolt bridge.

When I looked at Network Preferences I found that there was a Thunderbolt Bridge service added in the left pane.  I deleted this in the pane and also deleted it from the Manage Virtual Interfaces drop down list (accessed from the settings 'cog' icon at the bottom of the pane).  Then I reconnected to the Cisco network and !Presto! it connected and was stable for at least 30 minutes.  Prior to this it would only stay connected for 10-15 seconds.

I have tried all of the suggestions in this and other threads and it is in MAVERICKS not "the router" or "dongles" and some of the other nonsense mentioned here. I have done everything included wiping the SSD in my rMBP and installing a fresh copy of 10.9.4 and this network connectivity drops eventually to the same condition as before. This dropout occurs even with ethernet and wireless on together or ethernet alone and picks up immediatly if you toggle wifi on and off. I have exhausted many "solutions" and I even tried this from imore.com with no success. http://www.imore.com/how-fix-mavericks-wi-fi-zapping-bluetooth

I am a power user with large networks/vlans etc and a heavy *nix user, I can say that this will definitely be my last MAC purchase of any kind as not only are the bugs too much....the support is a slap in the face.

hyrieus wrote:

 

I have tried all of the suggestions in this and other threads and it is in MAVERICKS not "the router" or "dongles" and some of the other nonsense mentioned here. I have done everything included wiping the SSD in my rMBP and installing a fresh copy of 10.9.4 and this network connectivity drops eventually to the same condition as before. This dropout occurs even with ethernet and wireless on together or ethernet alone and picks up immediatly if you toggle wifi on and off. I have exhausted many "solutions" and I even tried this from imore.com with no success. http://www.imore.com/how-fix-mavericks-wi-fi-zapping-bluetooth

I am a power user with large networks/vlans etc and a heavy *nix user, I can say that this will definitely be my last MAC purchase of any kind as not only are the bugs too much....the support is a slap in the face.

Be glad you don't have the screen flicker issue some Retina MBP users have, which is hilariously also linked with, you guessed it, Wifi being on! Here is a demo on youtube (click).

I do have a beef with the image retention these rMBP's suffer from, it's not permanent  but you never forget the last page you visit

Screen Flicker is old. I have it on my early 2008 where they had a 4 year extended GPU replacement, but the previous owner of my MBP didn't know of it and never had the GPU replaced. Now it's my problem and it's not hilarious.

Although 10.9.3 ran great, once I installed 10.9.4, nothing but major problems. I have several versions running on multiple partitions and was able to run the 10.9.4 Combo back over the initial 10.9.4 install and it is working better. Now that I have said that and jinxed it, this thing will start to go wonky at any minute.

I just found a solution that is working (so far) -- delete the com.apple.Bluetooth.plist file and restart.  Apparently the Bluetooth prefs file is the culprit for the slow-to-reconnect or fail-to-reconnect wi-fi issue.

I have had the exact same problem as described above. Tried all the solutions to no avail.   It happened just after maverick upgrade and a new airport extreme.  I found out that channel 1 in the 2.4 Ghz band was severely overcrowded at my home.  I manually set the channel to 6 and all of my problems went away.  This causes problems with Yosemite Beta 1 also.  I also set the 5 Ghz band to 40.  You can find these settings in the router/wifi/advanced page.  This also fixed the slow wifi on my iPhone.  Let me know if this helps anyone.

(yes, it makes no sense that Maverick seems responsible but it is the router that is supposed to select an uncrowded channel.  I works like a charm for me.)

I am glad you read the imore.com article I pointed to but it will return to the same state no matter how many times you repeat this "fix", it doesn't work and there is yet to be a solution or ANY comments from Apple itself.....no repeat business from me thats a certainty.

2011 - MacBook Pro...

Never had this problem until this week when I updated to Mav 10.9.4 - its a absolute nightmare to have defect on laptop where the wi-fi encounters conflicts and bombs out.

I might as well have a bricked Apple product caused by Apple!

This worked for me as well. First I deleted the airport key chain, then went to wifi preferences but there was nothing there as its a new install, then went to change the preferences folder and got restricted access message. As soon as I Command-I and then scrolled to the bottom to give myself administrators access and clicked the key lock to unlock and added Administrators I got a wifi connection password box for my main router. It seems to be holding so far.

So many dogs chasing their tails in this thread, this problem lies with the networking stack and happens regardless of whether  you are on wi-fi OR ethernet and the workaround is to toggle wi-fi on or off....doesn't matter if you use wi-fi at all the same thing happens on the wire. Rene Ritchies's (imore.com) fix that deletes bluetooth p.list does NOT last long and a fresh install over the network on a clean wiped drive doesn't work as well as the long list of "fixes" in this thread. Maybe come up with real solutions that actually last more than 5 minutes before posting about your "success".

Hyrieus quote, "So many dogs chasing their tails in this thread, this problem lies with the networking stack and happens regardless of whether  you are on wi-fi OR ethernet and the workaround is to toggle wi-fi on or off..."

Since you know the problem could you or Apple please fix it?

How about using the old network stack?

Oh, the wi-fi toggle did not help me.  Changing wi-fi channels did (for a week so far). 1 iMac, 2 MacBooks, 1 MacBook pro.

hyrieus wrote:

 

So many dogs chasing their tails in this thread, this problem lies with the networking stack and happens regardless of whether  you are on wi-fi OR ethernet and the workaround is to toggle wi-fi on or off....doesn't matter if you use wi-fi at all the same thing happens on the wire. Rene Ritchies's (imore.com) fix that deletes bluetooth p.list does NOT last long and a fresh install over the network on a clean wiped drive doesn't work as well as the long list of "fixes" in this thread. Maybe come up with real solutions that actually last more than 5 minutes before posting about your "success".

It appears that the problems reported in this thread, all vary depending on specific hardware that is packed into each specific laptop. I am not surprised, that certain "fixes" work for certain users and not for others.

Your problem seems similar to the one I am experiencing on my MBP (13" mid-2012). Similar to Deathmill, this MBP worked flawlessly until the second after upgrading to Mavericks, and it has persisted with each and every Mavericks update. I use the ping work-around, which has consistently worked for me. You might want to give it a go, if you have not already. If it works for you, great. Just use it until Apple gets their act together and releases a legitimate fix (don't hold your breath). If it doesn't work for you, then your issue is yet another unique case.

You can also try Harvey's suggestion of purchasing a USB Wifi stick to use in place of the built-in one, which is now broken.

Welcome to the club!

I have the same question but this is worked for me: system reference -> Network -> uncheck "Ask to joint new networks" (Known networks will be joint automatically. if no known networks are available, you will have to manually select a network.)

One different solution that seems to be working for my mid-2010 MBP so far is that I've turned off my connection to my iCloud account.   I had a lot of connectivity problems over the last 3 months after upgrading to Mavericks and I have tried all other solutions posted (including, but not limited to, deleting preferences files, PRAM resets, SMC resets, reinstalling Mavericks, installing all updates, trying different browser/mail application combinations). These were usually (but not always) brought about when putting the machine to sleep.   For the last two days, I've been intentionally "breaking" my wireless while leaving the console open (i.e. purposefully doing tasks that seemed correlated with the wireless going out -- putting it to sleep or tethering to my Phone over wireless).    I kept getting two very consistent kinds of messages in the console when the wireless would drop.   The first were related to power/access issues with the wireless card... for example, my status bar when clicking the wireless access would say that the wireless was on, when it wasn't -- and trying to power it up via networksetup at the Terminal would generally give me VendorID and secondary bus issues.

The rest of the messages that were appearing generally reported problems that typically are related to VPN (for example, issues with a utun0 interface) or to network processes that were not being resolved.  However, I don't use a VPN, so I didn't know why that device was active.  Then I found that Back to My Mac used a VPN connection, so piecing it together with some other console messages at the time that the wireless dropped, usually there was some com.apple.something process trying to access the network relating to something that I had linked in iCloud (sometimes it was Calendar, sometimes it was Mail, sometimes Safari) and often this would result in certain processes running through the en1 device being in a strange state according to netstat (FIN_WAIT_2) which would typically coincide with the wireless connection dying.

So finally, I took the following steps:

1. In System Preferences, log out from iCloud (note that it will delete any files stored locally from your machine -- but not from the Cloud obviously). 

2. Shut down the machine and restart (note I specifically DID NOT try a PRAM reset -- a standard restart worked here). 

Everything has worked perfectly since... I've tried putting the machine to sleep, tried powering up and down the wireless, tried using my usually super-problematic tethering from my iPhone via wireless (this almost ALWAYS caused the wireless to end up in limbo and stop working).  Things have been very stable and no strange console messages like what I was seeing before.

Conjecture (if anyone from Apple is monitoring this thread still and not just praying that Yosemite will solve the issue):  There is some issue with the iCloud connection in Mavericks that is causing the wireless device to become partially (but not completely) disabled because they're not completely closing the connection.  I would guess that there is some process that is not being exited properly when the wireless connectivity drops completely because of sleep (or weak wireless connectivity).  

It would be good if anyone who has been using work arounds like deleting preferences files or using a dongle could try this simple solution to see if it also worked for them.