Q: MacBook Pro constantly losing wireless connectivity

What worked?!

draper3000Oct 13, 2010 12:36 PM Fixed Problem (in my case this worked anyway).
Re: MacBook Pro constantly losing wireless connectivityin response to ffredburger

Amazing thread, Apple should address this properly.

After an awful lot of trawling forums I finally found this useful thread.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=518958

with tips that seem to of worked, basically clear your network settings, then clear passwords in keychain, then repair hard-drive permissions in disk utility, (mine seemed to fix about 300 airport problems).

or as the guy I now owe my thanks to put it said:

Name: "SouthernDoc"

I posted this in the other thread about this issue in the OS X forum.

This is what solved my problems 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.

This worked fixing my two computers and my parent's computer. All have been working well for a few weeks now thanks to this. I think the passwords somehow become corrupt with keychain because analyzing the logs of my AEBS, I could see that the computer was registering but the AEBS wasn't giving it access (I'm using WPA2 encryption).

Message was edited by: draper3000

Just curious to see if there was something new. This is an old many times posted "fix" that didn't work for me. That's the problem with these huge threads when someone posts and says "it worked!" and doesn't post what it was that worked. It could and has been a billion things.

The curious thing that has happened to me, is that I get WiFi after waking from sleep now. But once it's up, it's a toss up as to how long or how well it'll work. I can almost depend on WiFi returning after waking from sleep every time. Sometimes after start & restart. Now if it would only stay and work! I'm running 10.6.8, 10.9.5 and 10.10v2 and this behavior is consistent across all OS's. It's kinda like once you're "infected" it affects the machine as a whole no matter what OS. For me this started in Mountain Lion.

I have this problem too.  I thought it was the modem or Apple router, paid for better internet service, and had service technicians come out to inspect modem and internect connectivity for them to tell me its my MacBook Air. 

*****

Hi,

Network fix Mac

Make DNS OPEN DNS - just lookup ip for opendns

In Keychain network logins - remove all network login - system will re-create new one.

Renew DHCP lease

Auto proxy discovery

I believe the most important part is in the Keychain part. Anyway, after these steps, mine has worked flawlessly until the next update and then I had to repeat it and then it works fine now.

This was brilliant advice! I just followed the first 2 steps, and all seems well now without even restarting my computer. I'm very grateful as my productivity was suffering greatly with this problem.

Just got my MacBook Pro back from extended warranty repair, SquareTrade, where they addresses the recalled video section and in doing so replaced the motherboard that contained the WiFi chip. I played with it for a couple of days with the original 300GB hard drive before putting the 1TB hard drive back in and WiFi was as one would expect. Once put the 1TB HD back, I had all my old OS's and settings and since I have had none of the WiFi issues I previously discussed in any of the OS's. Yet.

So in my case it looks like it was a hardware issue. But it could be anything from the WiFi card to the its connections from the card itself to the Motherboard to . . .

Hi All,

I don't know if people are still having trouble with Macbook Pro/Mac wireless connectivity? I had it for months and it drove me bonkers, I changed my router for a new one not Apple! I also had my telephone socket in my house changed and had engineers check out my whole system with no faults found. I then went along to a friends party and got talking to a friend who was having the same problems. He told me what he had done and what follows is what he suggested. It cost me £50.00 for a second hand product and all my problems have gone away. Here is the solution that worked for both of us.

We both purchased an Apple AirPort N Extreme 5G (A1408) and connected this to our normal router (Which in my case is a ZyXel VMG8324-B10A) and bingo no more connectivity problems to my home network. I have had the Apple AirPort N Extreme 5G (A1408) connected to my normal router and connected to the internet via the Apple AirPort N Extreme 5G (A1408) rather than the ZyXel router direct for over a month now and have not had one problem.  A Simple remedy which I wish I had thought of ages ago as it would have saved me a lot of money and heartache. The ZyXel was not the first router I had the problems with, I had tried a Belkin and Netgear.

You can find the Apple AirPort N Extreme 5G (A1408) here: https://uk.webuy.com/product.php?sku=SNETAPPAPEXA1408#.VZWrp2DYlUQ If you are still having a problem this is well worth ago.

I have a Macbook Pro 17" Intel Core 2 Duo running 10.6.8. I also had the loss of wifi problem, which only began in the last few years. The wifi would usually work for an hour so if I left the machine turned off overnight, then it would stop working. If I put the machine to sleep and woke it up again, the wifi would work for a while, then say "No airport card installed." This went on for a long time, getting progressively worse.

Finally I took the machine to a Macbook Pro specialist here in Sydney, and he replaced the wifi chipset. No more problems!

It looks like the chipset in this model was prone to failure. So was the video card - Apple said as much and replaced it free a few years ago.

Somewhere oh somewhere in this thread was a recommendation about getting away from certain channels and towards a more specific one relating to the camera app on my MBP. As if the camera interfere with certain channels selected. Does anyone have an update on that notion. It worked well for me but I cannot locate it.

I'll add my plight to the thousands of others.

I have this problem on my El Cap mini, it started only a couple weeks ago (about a month after i updated the mini with no problems), and is REALLY annoying. This is a well known bug in OS X going back YEARS.

Other Macs on the same network (both running El Cap; upgraded at different times; no change to the network itself in years) have had no problems, both before and after I upgraded them to El Cap.

Other Macs I've had over the years during various different iterations of OS X have had the problem, but most of the time not. I'd say over the 15 years of me running OS X, across dozens of Macs, various configurations, upgrade cycles, etc, I've had the problem only 2 or 3 times.

It's reared its ugly head again, though, and NOTHING seems to fix it. I can't believe Apple hasn't managed to nail this bug after 15 years. I understand it's probably complex, but this is obviously a known bug, affecting a significant percentage of OSX configs.

VERY frustrated.

I got my power book mother board replaced under third party warranty and everything works great. But as time has gone on things are slowly dying. I have a feeling that the hardware is time limited. Works great for a while than starts dying no matter what you do. So I got myself a cheap cheezy little tablet and find it easier and better to use.

Been struggling with the same problem for weeks; My Macbook Air lost wireless connectivity after 5-10 minutes of operation, and had no internet for about 30 seconds, before the connection automatically went back on for another 5-10 minutes and so forth.

I suspected everything but my macbook, but running simultaneous "traceroutes" on different computers and my router, showed that only the macbook had the problem.

For me this was solved (now on my 5'th hours without a disconnect) by changing the MTU size to 1453 bytes as described in http://osxdaily.com/2012/08/02/fix-os-x-mountain-lion-wireless-connection-proble ms/

Hi

My Macbook Pro Late 2013 is also suffering from same issue.

At times it shows no hardware installed.

After SMC reset, it works for some time and then again this problem appears.

Is Apple taking care of such issues?

Hi All,

Was having exactly the same issue: the wifi was dropping me off initially after some idle them, then more recently  every couple of minutes . What worked for me like a charm? Turning of the enegery saving mode for WiFi!

Go to Preferences/Energy Saver/ and make sure to deselect the Wake for WIFI network access option.

// happy wi-fi browsing after the above