Q: MacBook Pro constantly losing wireless connectivity

I'm in too.

17" Mac Book Pro, 1st Gen Iphone and 17" Titanium powerbook recognize the apple express and show full bars but the internet connection works intermittently.

Software updated.

Started to happen last week.

No rhyme or reason for it not working.

Restarting everything seems not to matter.

Hardwiring into modem works fine.

Do not have real player installed.

Any suggestions appreciated given in simple, step by step instructions.

Have to go before it goes down again.

RS

Did anyone by chance already installed the "Security Update 2008-007"? Did it fix anything for you? I am not at home and cannot try myself.

If Apple is pretending that the problem does not exist, and it is a software issue as I am inclined to believe, they will solve it silently with patches like this.

I read that the update "addresses a mixture of UNIX foundation and Mac-specific flaws", more detail at: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/10/09/applereleases_security_update_2008_007_for_mac_osx.html .

Giacecco

Bob,
If all of your devices have wifi networking issues, your problem is very likely NOT what we are discussing in this thread.

This thread is about a Macbook Pro specific issue, that is almost always found only on the Macbook Pro while other Macbooks / Powerbooks / iPhones on the same wifi network work perfectly.

To really understand if the issue is a communication between your devices and the Apple Express, try pinging it and see if packets are loss, e.g. running from a terminal:

ping -c 100 192.168.1.1

where 192.168.1.1 is the IP address of your Apple Express. After 100 pings, you will get an estimate of the number of packets that have been lost.

G.

Well, as a former Apple tech this is an issue that has had me baffled as well and I can sympathize with all the diligent people here who have been looking for help and appreciate those who have tried helping.

But this is interesting:

I was trying to pair my iPhone 3G to the bluetooth headset to no avail.

Every time I activated bluetooth on the iPhone, my MacBook Pro would drop the Airport network. What is interesting is my Apple bluetooth keyboard works fine and apparently that bluetooth pairing has had no effect on my Airport network.

For those of you with bluetooth headsets, phones, etc: try disabling bluetooth on some of those devices and see if it helps out with your Airport issues.

Now, I have had connection failures before under different circumstances, but I thought this was interesting and might help some people.

At this point I bet some folks are willing to try anything. I am truly surprised that Apple has not found a concrete solution for this mess by now.

Good luck everyone!

The update does not fix anything to my MBP.

Hi. It's not MPB related, I have exactly the same problem with my macBook while MPB works perfectly, both are 10.5.5.

I updated to 10.5.5 and now - no internet despite trying EVERYTHING. My next step is to take it into the apple store, which is hugely inconvenient and unless apple has a fix that they can install...I don't know what to do.

Hi cloustalot,
can you please confirm that the problem started exactly with the installation of 10.5.5? How long have you had wifi working before? I am seeking for some proof that the wifi issue is not a hardware one. Thanks!

G.

Just want to add something to this debate. Firstly having read through all the posts, it isn't just apple that have had wireless issues, MS Vista has had major issues with wireless connectivity, threads on google. Also in my humble opinion the problem is on the main a software issue, we have many Macs and have had No wireless problems with our recent machines including a MBP, we also work with others that use MBP's that have No such problems so this isn't a general problem. We did however have slight problems with two less recent machines after installing Leopard, the problems were fixed by repairing permissions and re installing. Therefore in the majority of cases a fresh install of Leopard & up dating to the current up date will hopefully resolve most issues.

Thanks Michael.
It is still not clear to me how you can be sure it is a software issue.

The fact that the problem is shared with Windows, when installed on the same MBP, points to the fact that the problem is either 1) hardware or 2) in some code that both the Windows and Mac versions of the wireless card drivers share.

I agree on the fact that it is not a general problem, otherwise there would be armies of people outside the Apple Stores asking for their money back.

My hypothesis is that, if it is a software bug, it is linked to some tricky and subtle parameter of the wifi protocol, possibly related to how interference is managed by the radio stations, and emerging with specific access points only that manage that parameter in a less conventional way.

I don't believe that reinstalling is a viable option. It takes hours of effort to get back to a fully configured machine, and there are people in ths thread who have tried and achieved nothing.

It is good to see you have had the problem after installing Leopard (10.5 or 10.5.5?) because it supports the software bug thesis.

What do you think?

G.

Hi G,

Thanks for your reply, i do appreciate what you're saying. However i do think in the majority of cases the problem can be resolved by Re installing Leopard, not all obviously there may be some that have a hardware problem but not many, and there are some people that have posted with slightly different problems than the loss or low connectivity that i suffered. Anyway in my experience of over 12 years with apple computers they are incredibly reliable not just the hardware but also the operating system which is the key, because most computers (all brands) are reliable, most people i work with use apple, however lots come to the Studio using Windows machines which are less reliable, not because of the hardware but because of the OS. So in a long winded way all i'm saying is electronics in general these days is very reliable. Now i have a MBP with no wireless problems, i have just noticed that Nerowolf has just posted to say that he has two MBP's with No probs and i work with several others with MBP's with No wireless problems, however after upgrading all our Macs both Studio & Home with Leopard, 2 suffer some wireless problems fortunately in our case both resolved, but these problems didn't exist before Leopard. Also in my view if you have a problem with an early version of Leopard it wont necessarily be fixed with the up dates as the initial installation could be bad.
On a very slightly different topic we recently bought another Express unit and couldn't get it working properly, having bought Express units before i suspected a faulty Express, we sent it back only to be told there was nothing wrong and it was returned to us, still didn't work, 'Problem' looked on Discussions, lots having issues with Express. To cut a very long story short we eventually got it working by resetting reloading software etc etc So hardware was fine all along.

Sorry G for my late night rambling, i'm tired. Am about to send this from a Mac lap top running Leopard (which was re installed) wirelessly.

Best regards, Michael

Hello Again G,

I have this morning carefully checked the wireless signal to all of our computers, and at least one machine has a weaker signal with Leopard, it was previously running Tiger and had good signal strength, we haven't done anything about this one since it still works okay with the weaker signal, it's the farthest machine from the Airport base station and it's the most recent one to be up dated to Leopard, it's approximately 70 feet from the BS but still managed a good signal with Tiger, nothing apart from the up date to Leopard has changed on the machine.

Best,, Michael

Hi Bob,

I think your problem is the Express, not the Hardware but the Software, is it a recent Express ?

Best,, Mike

I am writing just a short message in case Apple mistakenly believed that this problem was solved.

It is quite clear that many other people than the ones in this thread are experiencing the problem. From what they describe, possible candidates are:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1749468&tstart=15

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1756323&tstart=0

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1752506&tstart=0

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1754653&tstart=0

I have two Mac book Pros and the wireless works great. All you have to do is be running any flavor of Windows via Boot Camp. Neither can access the wireless via a web browser beyond one page load when running OS X. The software update works wirelessly. Hmmm. It is clearly a software problem. I am trying to stop using Windows day in and day out on my MacBook but getting by without the web is tough.