Q: Macbook Airport Drops Connection

In my case, I bought a Macbook 13 two days ago, I haven't been able to connect wireless to my home network at all whith the mac whilst, with my old windows XP laptop I have no problems at all.
I have, since then, spoken several times with the care team and they haven't solved the problem yet. Last conversation was yesterday at 5.15pm and after 30 minutes on the phone the guy asked me to run a hardware test and call him back once it had finished, which I did, but when I called back but was 6pm and the closed at 5.45pm...very clever people. Here I am with no internet access on my brand new Macbook for the whole weekend.
The case it's the Mac detects my network but when I try to log in, sometime says "connection failed" and sometimes "wrong password" but the password it's the right one, I can access on other computers with this passwrod.
Sometimes also theres a popup saying "none of your networks is available".

Anyone having this problem? Any ideas what's going on here?

Thanks!

Try connecting via ethernet and run software updates until there are no more to be done (there should be a few to do). There may be some OS and/or driver updates that your macbook needs to run the wireless properly. I had the same issue with a used macbook i just purchased and the software update resolved the issue. I was installing Tiger though, but this still might be a fix for you. give it a try!

There were a couple of updates I added over the weekend, and this has helped the disconnects so long as I have the power-cord plugged in. But the minute you start running off the battery the wireless will drop out every few minutes.

Since installing Leopard I've had the same problems as everyone else, and have tried all the solutions, but this is getting pretty ridiculous! What's the point in having a laptop if you have to keep it plugged in all the time!

(Just adding my two cents)

So far (a restart and a couple of times waking from sleep) prioritizing the airport in the network port configurations & resetting of the PRAM seems to have solved the problems on my 2006 MacBook. Keeping my fingers crossed. Thanks for the tip

I've had similar problems to you with the same solution. My Airport connection to my AP (AT&T/2Wire DSL gateway) drops out intermittently, at intervals varying between 5 minutes to over an hour. I've tried resetting the PRAM and dumping the config file, and tweaked the settings on the AP, but the only thing that works for me is to leave iStumbler running. This leads me to believe the problem is a software bug and not a hardware issue.

I will say this, after being an almost exclusively PC user for the last 20 years, this is the only issue I have had with switching to a Mac.

BEWARE...the possibility of a hacker compromising your system via the internet. anyone can hack mac, it's just they prefer to spend time with pc to infect much wider field.

my AirPort status bar goes on and off like yours except unnaturally for the interval of at most 5 seconds (and for how many of you this is the case?). And it was this that roused my suspicions of the possibility of a hacker intruding.....and I want to ask any expert that's out there..how to tell the difference between a connection problem (be it router, or software) and the prowlings of a hacker.

I found this solution searching on Google:

http://www.syzdekistan.com/2008/10/06/macbook-pro-wireless-problems-solved-updat e-2/

This guy tried everything including replacing the router, reinstalling the OS, replacing the Airport Express card, deleting and reinstalling network connections, deleting plist files, etc. It turned out it was due to a broken antenna wire (located in the LCD display assembly). He reports no problems with his wireless networking since the antenna replacement.

Thanks for the tip. I'm waiting to see if 10.5.7 fixes the issue. If not, I'm gonna have to start changing out hardware. If that doesn't work, screw it, I'm getting rid of my mac. A laptop is useless if I can't take somewhere other than within three feet of the router.

Sounds like my house. Same problem. My question: what part of the file do you delete? I am having great difficulty w/ my emac G4. Almost got postal w/ the Netgear & Clearwire folks on the phone.

Today I brought my macbook in to apple and I'm hoping they will replace the airport card. I told them that reinstalling the OS was done before with no luck. I'll keep you posted. Im hoping its the card.

Have a MacBook (13-inch) white 1.83 GHz 2GB RAM 100GB HD

Airport was running at just above 50% at 4 feet from router, and dropping every 10-15 minutes. Bought a new airport card 802.11g, put it in last night. Now it's running at 80-90% signal strength and no droppouts.

Well, according to the apple repair sheet the logic board was replaced and 2 other "airport" items were also replaced. Apparently it said they ran hardware tests and discovered these items were faulty. Well the second I turned It on the airport worked well for about 2 minutes then it was business as usual which for me means, flucutating download speeds, like going from 300kbs down to 10kbs. Websites taking forever to load, and airport meter going from 4 to 2 bars every now and again and also inability to find as many wifi networks as are out there (as compared to friends macbook).

Guess I'll have to wait for 10.5.7 or 10.6, that is probably our only hope

I would take it back to the Apple Store. It could also be a faulty antenna. I would also check out different wifi networks to make sure it's not your router. (ie. I was having drops even with the wifi network in the Apple store, so for me, it wasn't my router)

for me replacing the 10.5.6 version of the IO80211Family.kext file (with 10.5.2) worked for a few hours then it went back to the usual on again off again internet.

So I took the kext files from the original OS 10.5 (retail) install disc

IO80211Family.kext
and
AppleAirport.kext

The internet has been fine since.

We have the same problem. The MacBook Pro intermittently drops its wireless ethernet connection. The problem sems to have occurred since a software update earlier this year. Prior to the recent set of updates (mid Jan onwards) it was rock solid. Since then it's unusable on a wireless connection.

The access point is a HP 420 in b/g mode using WPA2. All my other systems using wireless ethernet are fine. So is the MacBook Pro when running Windows XP.

The only useful information I can add is that manually renewing the DHCP lease (Network preferences > Airport config > advanced > TCPIP page) re-establishes the connection - until the next drop. No need to poke about in all sorts of places or reboot or any of the other proposed 'solutions'. Manually renewing the DHCP lease is merely a work-around that might help.

When the DHCP lease is renewed the airport gets the same set of information (IP V4 address, DNS servers, default gateway etc.) as it had before. The access point hasn't seen the airport 'go away' at wireless ethernet connection level (so no failures with encryption or authentication at wireless ethernet level), so I suspect that the wireless ethernet connection stays up, but that the MacBook Pro loses it's IP V4 connectivity, which is re-established by renewing the DHCP lease and thus resetting the IP V4 default route etc. in the OS.

I don't have access to the OS code, so that's not definitively 'the reason' for the problems a lot of people have been experiencing, but it's reasonable supposition based on what I observe happening.

Whatever, it's a bug that's been introduced. It needs to be fixed by Apple. The sooner the better.