Wifi connection bad since upgrade to 10.4.10

Hm, now I wonder why everyone else has the signal drop out, and come back on wake or on turning the ap card off/on, while I had signal yet no internet at all?

Did anyone else get no wireless connectivity whatsoever after 10.4.10? (I suppose, ironically enough, they wouldn't be posting...)

Pinging would just timeout on my machine.

Well that's just the thing, none of us are Apple kernel engineers or Apple device driver engineers.

This isn't a misconfiguration problem or improper accesspoint settings.

This is a bug in the kernel or Atheros device driver that was introduced with 10.4.10.

Nothing we can do will fix this. We need confirmation that Apple knows of this issue, and is actively working on a fix for it.

I am still busy at work, but will post my conversation with Apple Care once I get a chance to call in.

-S

Wow, that Applecare call was an amazingly unsatisfying experience.

First, let me explain that I work in the IT industry and daily start tickets with Oracle, Cisco, Redhat, MySQL, etc..

I called and explained my problem and the operator told me I'd need to re-install OSX. Seriously, that was the solution.

Here's the nuts and bolts of it after having to coax it out of the "specialist"...

(Paraphrasing)
-"There is no known issue for 10.4.10 causing WIFI problems."
-"All these problems are standard upgrade issues. They occurred with the 10.4.9 upgrade the same way"
-"Re-install OSX from your install disks. Before and after the install boot from the install disk1 by holding "c" and run disk utility. Do BOTH a "repair disk" and "repair disk permissions".
-"Finally upgrade to 10.4.10"

I told him I was very unhappy with the solution, and can I not start a bug ticket somewhere like Redhat, Cisco, Oracle, or even Microsoft allows you to do.

He said no.

I asked him for a case number so I can call back in and follow up if this fails to fix the problem. My case number is 80227013 if anyone is curious.

I'll report back here after I do all this. Of course if it fixes the problem I'll be the first to admit I was wrong and make an offering to the Altar of Apple....

-S





Macbook Z0ES Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Hey Chris! I'm also a Mac newbie, I got my MacBook mid-April and will be getting a 15" MacBook Pro in 2-3 weeks, at which time my wife will get this MacBook and her previous Mac laptop will be retired. I have previous experience using them, but this is the first one that is mine. I've been working with Windows boxes since the days of Dos 1.0 and will probably continue to use them for as long as I work. But that is work -- I'm a SQL Server Database Administrator -- and my home stuff will be mostly Mac-centric from now on. Vista was the last straw, and since my IBM ThinkPad was on the verge of giving up the ghost, I went Mac.

Overall, they're much more reliable in terms of number of kernel panics vs number of blue screens of death. Prior to the 10.4.10 patch, I'd say I average about one kernel panic a month, my wife could go three months or more without one. Honestly I think my number is a little high, but I consider it an acceptable since the machine recovers and restarts so quickly. That is also comparable to the number of BSODs that I got on the three Windows boxes that I used (desktop, laptop, work). The number of BSODs that you get on a Windows box increases greatly with an increase of installed poor quality software. I don't install the "browser toolbar of the week" or a bunch of junk that changes desktop wallpapers and icons, as a result my systems were more stable (excluding hardware problems).

I think that is largely the same on the Mac side.

Anyway, give it some time and you'll probably like it.

Cheers!

im a mac newbie as well, i just had this macbook for a week now so i really dont have that many files to backup or reinstall. Im willing to do a reinstall to go back to 10.4.9 with the discs it came with but my question is am i gonna have iLife back in the system? since the macbook came installed with it outta the box?

Okay, Applecare is telling me "there are no known issues with airport and 10.4.10". Their advice? RELOAD OSX.

This forum is buzzing with airport problems after the 10.4.10 upgrade, so enough crap.

I'm looking for someone to help me with diagnostics. First I'm using a week old 13" macbook with 2Ghz Core 2 Duo. Please respond only if you have the same system.

Someone sudo root, and list your active kernel extensions and grep for the airport extension:

sbogers-computer:~ root# kextstat -l | grep -i airport
90 0 0x98a000 0x88000 0x87000 com.apple.driver.AirPort.Atheros (230.8.5) <89 36 16 6 5 4 3 2>
s

I'm interested in what's in the parens - (230.8.5) on mine.
Someone who either reverted or never did the 10.4.10 upgraded please do this on your system.

If these versions are different, the next step is to try to load the old Airport kernel extension on a (my) 10.4.10 system.

The extensions live in the "/System/Library/Extensions" directory. There appears to be two Airport extensions:

sbogers-computer:~ root# ls /System/Library/Extensions | grep -i airport
AppleAirPort.kext
AppleAirPort2.kext
steven-bogers-computer:~ root#

I'm believe AppleAirPort.kext is the Atheros extension.

Anyway, let's get someone to zip these up, hand them to me, and I will try to load these extensions instead and see if we find stability.

If any Apple Engineer that's reading this, or non-employee Apple kernel extension guru wants to chime in, please do.

Post here if you want to get in touch with me to email the kexts...

I don't have exactly the same model, mine is 2Ghz Core2Duo, built in late January, 2007.

<pre>
com.apple.driver.AirPort.Atheros (230.8.5) <92 35 16 6 5 4 3 2>
</pre>

Which doesn't help, since this might be a behavior specific to the latest board revision... but mine has overall been very well-behaved on WiFi, and never KP's.

Quad G5, PB 15" 1.5Ghz,MacBook 2.0GhzCore2Duo Mac OS X (10.4.8) MacBookPro 2.33Ghz C2Duo/120G/2G RAM, Logic Pro 7.2.3, Focusrite Saffire...

IIRC, the Atheros driver doesn't reside in either of those AppleAirPort kexts, but in another one whose name I can't remember right now (was I802 something).. I'll look it up when I get home later today.. :P

You could try doing a 'locate Atheros' to find out..

Black MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Perhaps:
/System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AirPortAtheros.ke xt

That's the same one referred to in:
kextstat -l | grep -i atheros



Quad G5, PB 15" 1.5Ghz,MacBook 2.0GhzCore2Duo Mac OS X (10.4.8) MacBookPro 2.33Ghz C2Duo/120G/2G RAM, Logic Pro 7.2.3, Focusrite Saffire...

Yep, that's the one 🙂

I tried unloading and reloading this kext to try and get the wifi connection back up, earlier, but although system.log showed that the operations were successful, the wifi connection was still unusable. I had to close the lid and open it again to get wifi back up.

Yup, I'm getting the exact same thing on my MacBook since the switch to 10.4.10. Any idea if we'll get a software fix and how long that might take to get resolved?

MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Having the same problem here. My MacBook is 11 months old and the wifi connection (using wpa2-psk) started to get flaky after the 10.4.10 update.

MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Hey everyone,

Same problem for me...but finally figured it out after reading this forum. I also called Applecare, I was directed to delete some files from the "preference" folder. Has not helped, still getting kernal panics and WIFI problems. Ugh!!!
Apple, please do something about this!!!

ps- If I were to revert to 10.4.9, how would I do this? (sorry for the newbie question)

That's the thing, all of you are having trouble with the driver for the Atheros chipset in the Airport Extreme Card. If you have a Core 2 Duo ( and thus a "N" capable card) the Airport Extreme Card in these MacBooks is the Broadcom chipset. It could be that since most of you don't have the new "N" capable Airport Extreme BaseStation, that you have not enabled the "N" capability by paying the nominal fee to Apple and downloading the code which enables that card. The .10 update may query the system and just load the Atheros driver as the default driver, which causes kernal panics and inability to join and stay joined to your WiFi networks. There may be a fault in the Atheros driver as well, since some of the MacMini owners are experiencing an inability of their systems to detect their Airport Extreme Card, and all of those are the Atheros chipset.

I also have the same problem. It seems that it only happens when running on battery. I also had a kernel panic yesterday (for the first time since I got my laptop 2 months ago). Most of the time I have to restart the system to get it back up (prior to the update I had an uptime of 2 weeks on my laptop). I get the same thing as everyone else. It shows full signal strength, it still has ip from my router but cannot ping it and will only show my network in the SSID list.

macbook c2d black Mac OS X (10.4.10) dual boot linux