Q: Macbook Airport Drops Connection

hello i thought i share you guys what i did to fix this internet connection can't stay connected to the internet using your wireless. all i did was go into my router settings and changed the channel from 11 to channel 6 and the security from wpa to wpa2 then click apply and since last night and today it's working just fine haven't had a drop connection even i reboot or turn off my mac, i like to think that the issue is gone because it's been only the 2nd day i'll keep you guys posted. good luck!

I've been suffering from this problem for about a month now. I had tried lots of settings changes on the machine and on my router (switching from WEP to WPA) but nothing helped. The only connection I could sustain was on a nearby unsecured network (not my own).

Last night I tried a solution someone had posted elsewhere for a MacBookPro running Tiger back in 2007 with the same symptoms and it seems to have fixed my connection drops on my system as well. I've gone a full workday without dropping connection.

*The solution? Reset the PRAM.*

Tell the system to reset and when the screen goes black press and hold "command, option, p and r" until it resets again and you hear the apple reset sound. Release the keys and see if your headaches are over like mine were.

Whilst WiFi channel hopping may help some people, I wanted to comment that the problem is a real one and is not related to the WiFi channel. Some years ago I switched my WiFi to channel 6 (my neighbours are on 1 and 11) and generally have a reliable connection on every PC except my Macbook (my Windows XP, Server 2003, Vista and Server 2008 machines, my Red Hat Enterprise Linux machine, my Mac Mini are all fine). I am using WPA (because WEP is insecure) but that's hardly groundbreaking and I'm certainly not going to buy an Apple wireless base station just to support one machine that isn't playing happily with other vendors' systems!

Resetting the PRAM does sound interesting though. I'll give that a shot!

Cheers, Mark

Is anyone having this issue with a black MacBook? My girlfriend and I bought MacBooks on the same day from the same shop (in Nov 2007) but different colours. The white MacBook keeps losing signal whereas the black MacBook is completely fine. The white saw a Genius at the weekend but it didn't reproduce the problem so it's been taken in for looking at.

In fact, it was December 2007.

Yes indeedy, I can confirm I'm having this problem with my blackbook. I thought it was my router, and that everything would be all better when I got a time capsule, but it's still happening at home. I haven't tried changing to a different channel, although that definitely might help since I can see about 10 other networks from my apartment. This only happens with my macbook though - my girlfriend and I both have 12" powerbooks that will stay connected just fine, although they do have significantly shorter ranges.

I tried deleting the preferences this morning, and it didn't drop again after that, but I was only on for 15 minutes or so before I had to leave for work, and I've seen it keep a connection for a couple of hours sometimes.

After my first visit, they say they replaced my Airport card. As soon as I sat it on the desk, and went onto the Apple Store wifi, I got the exact same problem: shows solid signal, but cannot connect to anything.

They checked it back in again, and called me back a few hours later. They replaced the airport once again, but this time, it's working perfectly.

I'm wondering if Apple has a supply of lemon airport cards, or a specific model or type that gets a bad bug? My Macbook used to have issues with heating up and blipping off back, which was fixed by Apple. I wonder if the Airport suffers from similar issues?

Anyway, back up and running. I say take your Macbook to the Apple store and let them replace the Airport card. Perhaps even twice.

For what it's worth . . . . when I received my new Macbook 2 weeks ago, I immediately experienced frequent wireless dropouts like so many others have reported. (Also, I only got 3 bars where my old iBook always gets 4). I was about to send the Macbook back to Apple when I noticed that Airport Utility 5.2.2 that comes with Leopard did not recognize my Graphite Airport base station. However, Airport Admin Utility 4.2 from Tiger on my old iBook did. I copied 4.2 to the Macbook, opened it and recognized the base station. I made no changes.

Since then I have had zero random dropouts. (I still get only 3 bars at home though I get 4 bars from other places). I honestly don't know if this solved the problem but there it is.

I have a black Macbook and it still keeps dropping my connection. My connection is (when it's up) at full speed (all bars are shown), even when I place my Netgear accesspoint downstairs while I use my Macbook upstairs.

The Airport Admin program on my Macbook has version 5.3.1 (531.9) and it doesn't find any (Apple)wireless networks. I don't know if this is correct or not, since I don't have any experience with it.

I tried it (the "+Reset the PRAM+" solution), and it still disconnects. Sorry

Message was edited by: Patrick6325

Hey

I've exactly the same problem ( who doesn't). I searched the internet and found this page http://www.appledefects.com/wiki/index.php?title=MacBook#Airportquality_and.2For_reception_is_defective_orunstable

Don't know if it works yet, because my airport is working ( it's magical). I hope it will have some succes.!

Wouter

I tried the ping solution, and it seems to work.
The problem is... it's just a workaround to generate network traffic instead of a real fix of the problem.

I also tried to delete de preferences file. It seems to work for a while, but now my problems have returned.

An open wifi is not an option for me, so I haven't tried it.

Try downloading the most recent software update - there's an AirPort one which seems to have fixed my problem of the signal dropping every couple of minutes... well, improved it anyway.

I have an airport express router. My MBP recently started dropping my airport connection. Every minute (most annoying). I then noticed that my Bro's Intel iMac running tiger was dropping connection every half an hour or so.

What worked for me is the following steps it may be just one thing that worked but this is what I did.

Down loaded the latest airport update for both OS X (even though I think I had them) I then deleted all the preferred networks. Used airport utility to set up a new network and manually configured the Channel from automatic which is usually Channel 6 to Channel 11.

The reason I did this is mainly because every time airport dropped I noticed it was still looking for the router. It found the two next door but is just wouldnt connect to mine (connection timed out).

*It now works better than before, in fact i now get reception in the back room and I have never managed to get a signal there before.*

AMAZING! I just downloaded and installed the airport update last night and now I can't connect to my home's wireless network at all. I can jump on a neighbor's network and get an extremely weak signal, not to mention be completely open to them, but I get an error when I try to get on my own. I've even tried resetting my router and rebooting my Mac. Does anyone else have this issue? Do I need to manually configure my network preferences?