Q: MacBook Pro constantly losing wireless connectivity

When I think about the months of 'troubleshooting' via Apple Care... and all the time wasted (stolen) from my home business.  Only to be told by Apple that it was my 'service provider' (ATT).

So I started hounding ATT.  They rewired my house, rewired outside including digging a trench.  They replaced and reset routers. They sent approximately 30 people out over a period of MONTHS (think of all the time:  months with Apple Care, then months with ATT)  --  with no resolution. 

ATT finally told me "we've done our best - if you're unhappy, find another provider."  

And all along it was Apple's faulty wifi.  Seems criminal to me.  Certainly there must be a young, hungry, e s q out there to force corrective action, warn potential buyers, and compensate those of us who have quantifiable losses.

Hi,

I made a change that may be a fix. I have not lost a connection in about a week anyway

Go to System Preferences>Network and make sure (Wifi) is selected. Then click on whatever is in Location and select Edit. Remove all items except (Automatic). Restart.

Again, I have not had any disconnects since I did this. It may not fix yours, but so far so good

Hi friends,

It seems it is generic issue with a lot of Macbooks. I too am facing this problem since I bought it last August. Initially, this issue wasn't frequent at all, but quite recently it has become extremely frequently. for example, it has lost its Wifi connection almost 10 times already today.

Now, what I am asking is what's the resolution? Frankly speaking, I am so much frustrated now after talking to Apple care staff already that I am prepared to return it for refund, although, I was in love with Apple products but, only when I didn't own any of them. My wife too has a similar problem with her iPhone.

Apple care asked me to take my Macbook to an apple store who will reload the OS and it should resolve the issue - not sure if it will resolve it or just decrease the frequency of the issue.

Bottomline, can I get a refund of the Macbook ? If yes, please suggest how. I am done with Apple stuff now. I already paid a fortune for this macbook rejecting Windows based laptops which supposedly won't have a lame Wifi issue at least.

Your thoughts please?

sood.rahul,

Apple will replace a product within 2 weeks of purchase. If you're beyond that they aren't likely to replace it, especially since it sounds like you haven't given them a chance to fix it even once yet. You say you're under Applecare, use it and let them fix the problem.

Thanks for your response Bob !

Just so that I am sure of the process - what if even after a reinstall of OS the issue remains ? What if there is a problem with the machine ? Will they still won't refund ? Or will they atleast replace the machine with one that doesn't have a problem ?

Like everyone else, I'm just another user. I can't speak for Apple. I can tell you logically though, they'll want at least a few attempts to fix the machine before they'll give ANY kind of consideration to replacing it. If you bought a car that made a noise and took it back one time after driving it for a year and they didn't fix it, would you expect a new car?

I know how frustrating this is. I went through it myself, though I didn't have Applecare to fall back on. Mine had already expired. You may have to go through the OS reinstall if only to prove it's more than that. Although that may be all you need, you really don't know at this point. Just let them look at it.

Dont know, my macbook pro just dropped down on floor from 1,5 meters and it has old drive not new ssd stuf. And it works. Those a **** of a machines. Dont know if any plastic **** would survive that.

What cbeyer said! I hope Apple reads this, gets off their *** and sends us an update fix. I'm about to buy a USB WI-FI bandaid. I've tried everything, read through all of these forums and others. Nothing.

...now my AppleCare is out of date. Like someone else said..." I paid big bucks for this problem, now it seems I'll have to dish it out for a solution as well"(paraphrasing)... I used to really love Apple but, me and many others are loosing major respect. Hey Apple! R U out there?! Fix this please!

I used the fix for my 2013 macbook pro

Worked well for 2-4 weeks.Then back to square one. Now even the fix below which i used previously is also not working.

This is what solved my problems (albeit temporarily) with WiFi disconnecting randomly, not appearing after awakening, etc.

1. Open network preferences from your WiFi icon in the menu bar. Then click advanced. Delete the network that is giving you problems.

2. Open Keychain in the utilities folder of your hard drive. Find the passwords that are stored for your particular network and delete them. There may be multiple passwords for your network, so search carefully.

3. Repair permissions using the disk utility.

4. Reboot the computer.

5. Reenter your network data to log into the network.

What in the world is apple doing!!! Why doesnt it have a perrmanent fix since a lot of people seem to have similar wifi problems....

I've actually tried this as well as reinstalling the OS and the onyx cache fix. Nothing. I'll try again when I get home. Maybe the sequence order was different. I don't know. I'm pretty frustrated with Apple after reading these reviews and realizing how huge this problem is. BTW... I just ordered a USB wi-fi dongle or whatever they're called because I don't expect APPLE to do anything since this has been a problem for so long...I don't expect genus to say anything that hasn't already been said either...but I may go back just to complain(maybe they will FINALLY get the message. APPLE????!!!!***?

The only thing that works for me is to minimize Network Diagnostics after everything is green under Network Status, i.e. leave it open.  All is well until I reboot.  Go figure.

From a bash shell on my macbook which loose the WiFi about 5-10 times per daY:

en1: 802.11d country code set to 'US'.

en1: Supported channels 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 36 40 44 48 52 56 60 64 100 104 108 112 116 120 124 128 132 136 140 149 153 157 161 165

wlEvent: en1 en1 Link DOWN virtIf = 0

AirPort: Link Down on en1. Reason 8 (Disassociated because station leaving).

MacAuthEvent en1   Auth result for: 00:18:39:7a:9e:61  MAC AUTH succeeded

wlEvent: en1 en1 Link UP virtIf = 0

AirPort: Link Up on en1

en1: BSSID changed to 00:18:39:7a:9e:61

AirPort: RSN handshake complete on en1

Looking at my Macbook Pro, Today, March 1, 2014:

bash-3.2# uname -a

Darwin Michaels-MacBook-Pro.local 13.1.0 Darwin Kernel Version 13.1.0: Thu Jan 16 19:40:37 PST 2014; root:xnu-2422.90.20~2/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

bash-3.2# pwd

/var/log

bash-3.2# grep -i "Mar" wifi.log

Sat Mar  1 09:32:11.260 ***Starting Up***

Sat Mar  1 09:32:11.278 <airportd[66]> airportdProcessDLILEvent: en1 attached (up)

Sat Mar  1 09:32:23.090 <airportd[66]> _doAutoJoin: Already associated to “jachin”. Bailing on auto-join.

Sat Mar  1 09:34:02.683 <airportd[66]> _doAutoJoin: Already associated to “jachin”. Bailing on auto-join.

Sat Mar  1 12:24:50.146 <airportd[66]> _doAutoJoin: Already associated to “jachin”. Bailing on auto-join.

Sat Mar  1 12:26:22.816 <airportd[66]> _doAutoJoin: Already associated to “jachin”. Bailing on auto-join.

Sat Mar  1 12:26:23.879 <airportd[66]> _doAutoJoin: Already associated to “jachin”. Bailing on auto-join.

Sat Mar  1 12:42:38.170 ***Starting Up***

Sat Mar  1 12:42:38.269 <airportd[66]> airportdProcessDLILEvent: en1 attached (up)

Sat Mar  1 12:43:18.478 <airportd[66]> _doAutoJoin: Already associated to “jachin”. Bailing on auto-join.

Sat Mar  1 12:43:21.325 <airportd[66]> _doAutoJoin: Already associated to “jachin”. Bailing on auto-join.

Sat Mar  1 13:03:13.122 <airportd[66]> _doAutoJoin: Already associated to “jachin”. Bailing on auto-join.

Sat Mar  1 13:07:37.942 ***Starting Up***

Sat Mar  1 13:07:38.381 <airportd[65]> airportdProcessDLILEvent: en1 attached (up)

Sat Mar  1 13:08:12.514 <airportd[65]> _doAutoJoin: Already associated to “jachin”. Bailing on auto-join.

Sat Mar  1 13:10:55.371 <airportd[65]> _doAutoJoin: Already associated to “jachin”. Bailing on auto-join.

Sat Mar  1 13:16:20.314 ***Starting Up***

Sat Mar  1 13:16:20.344 <airportd[65]> airportdProcessDLILEvent: en1 attached (up)

Sat Mar  1 13:16:29.797 <airportd[65]> _doAutoJoin: Already associated to “jachin”. Bailing on auto-join.

Sat Mar  1 13:16:38.074 <airportd[65]> _doAutoJoin: Already associated to “jachin”. Bailing on auto-join.

Sat Mar  1 17:25:04.118 <airportd[65]> _handleLinkEvent: WiFi is not powered. Resetting state variables.

I HIGHLY SUPPECT THE LAST EVENT is when I lost WiFi

Sat Mar  1 17:25:04.118 <airportd[65]> _handleLinkEvent: WiFi is not powered. Resetting state variables.

PROVES, my WiFi Card is for some REASON LOSING POWER. PROOF WILL BE IF THIS REPEATS...

So, I see this:

HIGHLY SUPPECT THE LAST EVENT is when I lost WiFi

Sat Mar  1 17:25:04.118 <airportd[65]> _handleLinkEvent: WiFi is not powered. Resetting state variables.

As either the WiFi card is actualy losing power.... hardware issue.. but  turning WiFi OFF, then ON resolves it.... So I think Apple can fix this via Software... since I do manally when it goes down....