Q: MacBook Pro constantly losing wireless connectivity

Today I installed the airport update for tiger and now the wireless connection seems more solid. Thanks Apple for fixing that after almost two years.

I got an Airport Express N based last month to set up my wireless connection last month based on my PPoE internet. Connected to the wireless network I have a MBP 15", MB 13" and iBook G3. Since Monday, my MBP is having connection issues and is dropping wireless connection. Looking into the problem I found 3 things:

1.- on MBP "AirPort has a self-assigned IP address and may not be able to connect to the Internet"
2.- Connection drops specially when MB 13" is connected to the Wireless
3.- It seems MB 13" and MBP are sometimes sharing same IP which produces de conflict but at the end MB 13" always wins and it is leaving my MBP out of the network (no idea how to change that)

So I reseted Airport Express N based to factory settings and created a wireless connection again. Unfortunately, the problem still persists even though I reinstalled Leopard on both machines

Wireless security is WPA/WPA2 Personal
any help will be appreciated __

Hi

The MACNN website link was reporting a wireless problem with Leopard and yes the solution they are suggesting is to restart the computer in safe mode. I tried this and I don't believe it fixed it, but I was highlightling it incase it sorted other peoples MBP.

I hoped it might help.

Hi Guys,

Here is what I have done to solve my problem in the short term. It pains me to have to do this but I could not continue this way. I bought a Airport Express to relay the signal from my Time Capsule. Keeping this close to where I am working is giving me a stronger signal, but its over kill really. My wife always got a powerful signal on her iBook G4, but not with the Express its unbeatable.

If I switch off the Airport Express my signal drops off immediately, unless I am sitting nearly on top of the TC. So if you can't wait for Apple to be bothered fixing this software fault, then you could try a relay like Airport Express. Just an idea!!

http://derekhall.eo-creative.com/ Left over 'GREY MATTER'

Gentleman. I think that we are barking at the wrong tree if we blame Airport for these problem. I had all of these bad wireless problem everyone is complaining about and I was also convenced that it was Airport. I had initially Linksys router that was giving me the problem. It worked OK with my Dell before I got MBP. In attempt to fix this I purchased Airport express and this one was doing even worse. I eventually returned it back to Apple. Today I bought NetgearWNDR3300-1BYNAS. All troubles are over. My connection seems to be faster than when i am on wired connection. If you can give it a shot and it might work for you as well. If not then return the sucker.

I've been struggling with Airport dropping signal on a brand new MBP. A friend helped me find a workaround that involves a few steps that actually seemed to solve the problem. The gist involves throwing away your home router keychain and starting anew. See full instructions at this site and good luck!

http://myrightbrain.wordpress.com/2007/02/25/troubleshooting-your-macbook-macboo k-pro-wireless-access/

It's obviously not all MBPs! I never had this problem with my MBP+Draytek router, and still don't now I've changed to an Airport Extreme...the data transfer now is MUCH faster, and the signal never seems to drop off.

N

I just received my new (refurbished MacBook Pro) yesterday and have been having connectivity problems in my home since I set it up. It behaves as if it is intermittently out of range from the router (mine is a Linksys) because the connection is VERY VERY slow and will more often than not time out. The only time this doesn't happen is if I am in the same room as the router. I did try someone's suggestion to change the router channel default to 9 instead of 6, and it does help somewhat.

What's strange, though, is that my Airport signal strength meter on my MacBook Pro never gets above 3 out of 4 bars, even if the computer is within a couple feet of the router...??? How can that be? Is it possible that signal interference can affect this? Have any of you experienced this, as well?

I'm running 2 other laptops off of my home wireless network without any problems. One is an older PowerBook G4 and the other is an HP Windows machine. Both are showing full signal strength for wireless, FWIW. Also, if it matters, my router is specifically 802.11b. Does that have anything to do with this problem?

Just wanted to add my experience to the fold. Thanks in advance for any help-

In any case, I hope that my machine is not defective.

kosinar wrote:
Gentleman. I think that we are barking at the wrong tree if we blame Airport for these problem.

I hardly think it's the wrong tree if you can recreate the problem where all machines can connect to the network in the same location with the same settings, except the MBP which does so horrendously unreliably, then a simple reboot into boot camp on the MBP proves that the hardware is OK because XP connects fine and stays connected.

That being said, what a lot of people have described are just general network set-up issues, and tweaking you set-up will provide more consistent results. For that reason it is perfectly reasonable to expect that some people issues will be solved relatively easily.

There is however a core issue here that some people have been unable to use wireless at all despite being a few centre metres from an _apple router_ (just to put to bed the fanboy logic that apple uses there own "standards" which third party manufactures all round the globe have somehow all failed to comply with simultaneously, I'm glad no ones tried that one recently)

For me, this happened @ 10.5.0 and having done 5 erase and installs on my macs (one of which has a single piece of software that takes 16 hours to install from disks!) I had to go back to 10.4.11 and having now done 10 complete software builds I'm just not bothering with leopard as it severely let me down, for this and other reasons.

There have been major wireless flaws since February 2007 so I have now wired the house with gigabit LAN and set up a new internet connection as there are unjustified technical reasons why the apple router could not handle the existing infrastructure.

All of this and more has been reported directly to apple with all the data I can provide to justify these claims. If nothing else I hope that it stops people having to go to the lengths of changing ISP and cabling the house to get a reliable home network with internet access.

Just to liven things up a bit. I have a first gen macbook pro that hasn't had any wireless problem until a month or so ago. I am running 10.5.2. The really weird thing is I cannot connect via wifi at home at all but if I am anywhere else it works perfectly. My imac has no problems connecting wireless ly at home nor does my iphone. Weird indeed! It definitely seems to be hardware related. I'm not sre what to do since it does work, just not at home :-/

Message was edited by: llc215

one thing I hadn't tried before until just now which appears to have worked: I deleted my preferred connection at home, then added it again and everything is working just fine. I'll let you all know how it goes.

I cannot believe that Apple is being so quiet on this issue! I have talked to two retail and three authorized Apple repair centers in the Austin, TX area and none of them will admit there is an issue but all want to keep my MBP for 3 - 5 days to "see what they can do. I bought this thing to do business on and now I have committed by business to this particular machine. Yes I have it backed up but can most of you be without your laptops for 3-5 days??? COME ON APPLE... GET YOUR COLLECTIVE HEADS OUT OF YOUR KEESTERS, QUIT USING OFFSHORE PROGRAMMERS AND FIX THIS **** ISSUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just had my airport card replaced by Apple Repair on my new MB Pro 17" 2.5GHz. Connections are now reliable again, but the range is still minimal.

So far Apple has completely replaced my year-old (Mid-2007, Gen. 3) 2.4GHz MB Pro 17" with the brand new (early 2008, Gen. 4) 2.5GHz 17". This is AFTER replacing the airport card THREE TIMES in my old 2.4GHz machine, the Bluetooth card ONCE, the antennas ONCE, and the entire logic board ONCE. And now the airport card was replaced ONCE on my NEW 2.5GHz machine. All under warranty.

If you're experiencing poor wireless connections, look at replacing the airport card in your MB Pro. None of the settings or software solutions will work, although sometimes moving to 5GHz only from 2.4GHz (or vice versa) results in a temporary work-around. You may also experience Bluetooth connection issues, such as with a BT Mighty Mouse, that also operates at 2.4GHz. The base stations don't seem to be the problem, since other wireless laptops and iPhones can connect without problem.

It helps to have an Apple Store Genius verify the problem on your repair, even though many of them are amazingly unaware of the situation. MB Pros has such a short wireless range, especially at 5GHz, that you can demonstrate range and connectivity to a Genius by walking away from the base station with two wirelessly connected machines, a MacBook and a MacBook Pro. The MacBook will have nearly three times the range of a MB Pro, especially at 5GHz. I think it's because of the antenna placements in the MacBook and that the MacBook case is RF transparent plastic. Having the antennas crammed into the hinge of the MB Pro doesn't help reception, but it's the only place the signal can get through the aluminum case.

The Airport (AP) Grapher is a great utility to observe the signal strength and connectivity ( http://www.chimoosoft.com/products/apgrapher/ ).

Also, look what Apple has done to try to design in a fix for the wireless problem:

(1) in the late-2006 Generation 2 MacBook Pros they used the 2-antenna BCM94321MC airport card.

(2) in the mid-2007 Generation 3 machines they tried three antennas connected to a AR5BXB72 airport card.

(3) in the latest early-2008 Generation 4 machines they've gone back to the BCM94321MC airport card, and the third antenna lead is left lying next to the card UNUSED!

Obviously they're aware of the problem, but haven't yet found the solution. And even though they won't admit that there's a problem, they'll spend a lot of money trying to get your machine to work. So even though it's a pain being without the machine for about a week each time, make them replace the airport card under warranty.

My office supports 6 mac users and about 20 windows users. I was running into this same issue. The windows users would stay connected without a problem, but the mac users would constantly drop the connection even though the wireless still showed full bars.

This seemed to first occur when we switched routers and switched encryption to wpa from wep. The first router was a POS $30 netgear, and we replaced it with a firebox 55e.

Anyway, after changing the fragmentation threshold and the RTS threshold down to 500, this corrected the problem, and all computers have stayed connected with no problem. There's a slight notice in slower transfer speeds, but it did solve the problem...

Yeah, I'm going to have to put my hat in the ring on this one too.

I have a first gen MBP, an Airport Extreme (802.11g) and an Airport Express (also 802.11g) set up as a WDS network with WPA2 encryption.

I've noticed this week that when I come home from work (after putting the MBP to sleep from work, driving home and then waking it up) I cannot join my home network. Airport is on but it refuses to join the network. I'm positive it's not the network because my wife's PowerBook G4 and my iPhone can connect without any problems.

The following did NOT solve my problem:
- Deleting Airport prefs
- Deleting my home network from the preferred networks list
- Restarting

What does seem to work is zapping my PRAM. But that's only temporary until the next time my MBP goes to sleep. That's annoying because it involves restarting.

I had the same problem. Starting my computer in safe boot mode fixed the problem.
Start holding the shift key. It takes a while to start.
Then restart as usual.