MacBook Pro constantly losing wireless connectivity

P.S. I would also remove any third party wireless utilities you may have installed in your systems.

I'll give that a go and see what happens, it makes little difference whether or not you're broadcasting your SSID if someone really wants access to your WAP, but I prefer to keep it off.

My problem is slightly different. I never lose connectivity (usually) while using the computer, it's when I wake it up. I actually have two problems. The first is my MBP flat-out forgetting my WAP. I'll have to turn off Airport and turn it back on, then it usually finds it. On rare occasions I'll have to cycle it twice. (sidebar question: is it possible to script this and put a button next to my wireless strength icon? it would save a lot of bother)

My second is that I'll have a page not load, and apparently caching information gets convinced that it'll never load. If I refresh the page (Firefox latest version), it'll instantly go back to a page not found. Recycle the Airport, refresh page, page loads.

My WAP is a Linksys WRT54G, I'm running 10.5.1. This has been happening since I got my MBP July '07 and continued with 10.5. I spoke with a Genius Bar guy and he said that some MBP's shipped with a slightly different wireless card and that they sometimes have problems. As far as I know, mine is not N-spec, not that I'd buy N-spec equipment at this time.

I am a new user to Mac and when I brought my new MacBook pro home and connected it to my network it kept loosing the connection. Thinking the problem was with my router, I bought another one,but same problem. Toreconnect I had to shut down the computer and turn it on again. I have tried many suggestions that I read in different forums but nothing worked till my son who is a computer technician suggested that I removed the N option in my router and use only the G protocol.

Since then, I have never experienced another miss connection.

Gaetan

We're seeing the same problem on our new MacBook running Leopard. Our base stations are all from Apple, and are all running 802.11g only, with WPA/WPA2 encryption. The iBook that it replaced never had the slightest problem, nor do our Xbox 360 or Wii.

The signal strength on all clients -- including the MacBook -- remains excellent, yet the MacBook loses its ability to connect to the Internet multiple times per day, requiring a reboot.

Since it occurs even with Apple hardware and common protocols such as 802.11g and WPA/WPA2, I strongly suspect this is a Leopard bug.

JCTorres wrote:
Until Apple fix this problem, you will need to broadcast the SSID and disable 802.11b or mixed mode your AP. That should take care the problem.

We broadcast our SSID and have set our base stations -- all Apple-branded -- to 802.11g only, and it's had no effect. Our MacBook still regularly loses the ability to connect to the Internet, while our other wireless clients are unaffected.

While I'm glad to hear your problem has been solved, many others use only 802.11g mode -- or, as in our case, do not even have 802.11n-capable base stations to begin with -- yet still see frequent connection drop-outs, even with excellent signal strength.

By trial-and-error I went to the "G-only" solution, that has been working flawlessly for a month in both macs (even though I have to renew the IP addreess from time to time in the router web application.) But your solution makes sense, in special the DNS lost addresses - but I don't think it has anything to do with the sleeping cycles, but instead with dropped connections in congested areas with lots of 2.4Mhz devices, that have the same effect of a sleeping cycle, as the connection has to be re-initialized - G-only seems to be more stable. Will try your solution and come back with results... Thanks a lot, agjr

FYI, I have a older G-only Airport Extreme feeding two Airport Express, one a relay, one remote. I'm still using 10.4.11, and I had never experienced this connectivity issue in the past until December.

My iMac also with 10.4.11, sharing the same air has no problem, has never dropped the connection. just the MBP with the classic symptoms of waking, showing full signal bars, reading the network but will not load a page.

Nothing but a restart will reestablish the network connection. It's really become a nuisance, it's MBP specific but it's definitely not exclusive to Leopard.

Yup! My MBP has same issue. Constantly drops connection after about 5 minutes. Wireless worked perfectly with old dlink G router even through Leopard upgrade. Since upgrading to new dlink dir655 with N, nothing but problems. Dell laptop works fine.

I'm having the same problems, and I've tried all of the suggestions here, to no avail. My connection seems to drop when I wake from sleep, particularly if the power lead was inserted or removed while the MBP was asleep.

My wife and son have a Macbook and and iMac G5, each connecting fine to my wireless network. The Xbox 360, Wii, Airport Express, Nintendo DS, PSP etc all connect with no issues!

I use a Netgear DG834N, Using N (switching to G or B makes no difference). I use no encryption, and use an access control list.

This problem is driving me insane. I've got a £2K laptop, running FCP2, Shake, CS3, Maya etc, and when the internet connection fails I want to drop-kick out of the house!

<Edited by Moderator>

I have this same problem, from the look of this thread it's pretty widespread. Hope Apple comes up with a fix soon.

Why did a moderator edit the last line from my message? All it said was something like "come on apple, fix this problem!"

Where I have seen that problem I switched to full 5GHz "n" and it disappeared. I had a client who for months had terrible problems and so did I when I was there with all my different laptops, including trusty Powerbook G4. No solution. I tried everything under the sun. This was an Airport WDS system that included both new Extremes and Expresses.

I changed the whole things to a 5GHz "n" system(no more WDS) with Expresses bridged to extremes and working as "g" so that the wireless printers would work and the music system too. The internet came alive with real high speeds and for two months now there has not been a single hiccup. No hiccups, no slowdowns, no lost connections, no intermittent audio throughout the place.

The situation was so terrible that you could see the green lights on all units arbitrarily decide to flash for a while and then go green again even when I placed them only feet from each other. It was absolutely crazy. You could go passed a door opening and go from full signal to nothing. For that area, we passed a 50ft cable from under the floor in the basement that goes from an extreme to a bridged express running "g." It was the only way to pass the signal through without having 3 or 4 extremes to do the job which I figured would have been needed. Now, even the "g" part works well off of the Expresses and everyone can connect with newer or older systems.

Your situation is not exactly the same, of course, but you can try the "n" setting and see what happens. Sometimes you have to go with the flow and around problems and forget about what "should be working." There is not enough time in life to waste on those things you have spent a long time on already.

Guys,

In November of 2006, Apple introduced second gen Macbook Pros. I bought the 2.33Ghz. This place was inundated with frustrated posters about the same thing you guys are complaining now. We had a very vivid discussion then because many kept sending their machines back for new ones which also exhibited the same behavior. The problem(s) where solved after a system firmware and two software updates for Airport. I had then said and I am saying now that this is a software/firmware problem. I had that problem with the 2.33 and that's how I know it was fixed over the next 2-3 months.

This one will be fixed too and you just have to find and live with workarounds till then, or sell your machines, or buy Airport Extremes(which have a very high success rate) etc.

One of the pieces in this puzzle was then and I believe still is now the Keychain password. Wiping out and reentering the keychain password, cleaning up the list of wireless access points under airport network preferences, etc.(you can go back and read all that stuff) seemed to have helped some but not others. It helped me in making it bearable until the first firmware update was delivered. That fixed one issue and left the other. Then the first software update fixed the second issue. The second software update in February of 2007 didn't do much difference but again some complained it set them back to the beginning. There's always those who never seem to not have something to complain about. Then there were some who had third party wireless utilities running and once they got rid of them, their problems were gone.

Last year's problem pretty much rendered that Macboo Pro uusuable. Dropped connections every few minutes(fixed after a firmware update) and inability to pick up a wireless network on wake from sleep much of the time.

I have since sold that Macbook Pro to a client, as of last December, and it works like a clock.

I occasionally also have the wake from sleep issue, with my current Macbook Pros (2.6 and 2.4) but 99.9% of the time it happens when I first wake up the machine at a place other than home, where there's new wireless networks around, and after I connect to the one I need it still does it once or twice following wake, but then it straightens itself out on its own and doesn't happen at all the rest of the day. It is obvious it is a software/firmware issue. For me it just is an annoyance.

Just some food for thought.

Hey,

I believe that the problem is caused because of what material the MacBook Pro's are made from. All other MacBook's work fine because there made from polycarbonate which makes the wireless connection easy to pass through where as the MBP's are made from aluminum which makes it a lot harder for the connection to pass through...

Does anyone agree?