No AirPort card installed!??

Same problem here on an April 2008 MBP.

At first my Airport Card suddenly disappeared completely (over a month ago). Recently it came back on once (without even rebooting; just putting it to sleep and taking it to work, after wake up it was back; unfortunately, at home it was gone again).

Currently (this seems to be a consequence of updating to 10.5.6), the Airport Card is reported installed, but turning it on does not work; it stays off.

I already did an SMC reset and PRAM reset without success. Apple Hardware Test reports OK, and when booted from the DVD the Airport Card seems to be active and working. I am very reluctant to try OS re-installs (and from what I read it is not even guaranteed to solve the problem).

I will still try to do a safe reboot, and to reseat the RAM modules (if I can find out how to access them).

I am waiting for the magic potion, though ...

The power reset solution should resolve this.
Turn off computer, remove power cord, and remove battery.
With battery out and power disconnected, keep "on/off" button pressed for 10 seconds.

Re-insert battery and attach power cord, then start up computer.
This should resolve the issue, and you can do this each time the issue occurs.

I'm also experiencing problems with the builtin wireless stopping working.
What I'm observing is that when it cuts out, I'm unable to get either the AirMac menu item or the Network control panel to re-enable wireless.

But every time (so far) restarting the laptop has restored wireless for a few hours. Putting the laptop into hibernation (using Deep Sleep) and then resuming doesn't cause the disconnected wireless to work again, nor does resuming from regular sleep mode.

If it makes any difference, I think 'ifconfig en1' showed something like 'media disconnected' when the wireless stopped working, and trying to disable and then enable the wireless using ifconfig couldn't change the status, either.

Here's one answer I haven't seen in any of these threads. I had same problem after migrating setting from G5 desktop to MacBook Pro. Tried most solutions to no avail.

Finally realized AppleTalk was turned off.

Works now

Bought a new 2009 17" macbook pro a few days ago. This is about the 5th time I have had the machine turned on. I was sitting doing some work, the cursor froze. I rebooted. Then I noticed I was not connected to my WiFi. I went into preferences and tried to turn my Airport card on and it refused. I restarted the computer and now it say "no airport card installed".

Clueless to why this is happening. Apparently $3100 buys you something that breaks in few days. Will take back to the store tomorrow. Any thoughts on how to fix this with these new mbps that don't allow you to take the battery out?

Thanks,
Matt

I had the same problem and I followed all the tips listed here and more from other threads to no avail. It happened to me after I updated to 10.5.6. I didn't notice the problem until I rebooted a few days later. In addition to no airport card being recognized I was getting "AppleAirPortBrcm4311.kext' was installed improperly and cannot be used." on bootup. I reinstalled the system from disk and then realized that even though it took almost an hour it didn't really install anything. So I deleted the whole /System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext and reinstalled the system again. This time it worked 🙂

I'm 6 months into the same problem except when I move the Macbook, I get a grey screen of death. Took it to the Apple Store in Victoria Gardens 2 hours away. They kept it for three days. Said it was fine. Crashed before I even took it out of the store. They did not assist me further other than to say do a new OS install. I did. Worked for 2 days. Lost airport again and again. Figured the movement thing was a bad "smart" sensor on the HDD crashing due to sensing movement. I just replaced the HDD and there is again, no Airport Card Installed. Fresh HDD, fresh OS 10.5.6. Reset the PRAM, etc. I LOVE macs. I have spend over $2 million dollars in my lifetime on them. But, I can't even use my own now. Apple, you really need to address this problem, Please!

Hi. I alternate between using my Airport card and the Ethernet cable. I have never encountered this problem until recently... when I decided to go wireless. "No airport card installed" is shown when I click the Airport icon. I haven't done the rebooting suggestions posted here, because it doesn't seem to be a final solution to the problem.

Has anyone noticed if Apple has issued any official information on this matter? This doesn't seem like a fluke as it's widespread.

Took mine in to the local Apple Store Monday, as it was freezing completely requiring a hard reboot. When it would come back up the computer would either say No AirPort Card Installed or I would have a blank pie slice which when clicked would let me try to turn the AirPort on, just to no avail.

The Store took it for an instore repair saying it is a faulty AirPort card...we'll see. I'll update when I get it back.

So far...it sat at the apple store for 1 week, until a genius installed a new card. Didn't work.

They have sent it to a repair center, which took 3-4 days and has been in "repair" status with them over the holiday weekend. Called today to see what's going on and was told a genius would be calling me in twenty minutes with an update...it's been 3 hours...

Needless to say I'm getting a little ******.

I picked it up from the Apple Store on Friday the 29th, in all the process took 19 days. They had overnighted it to the store on Wednesday and it arrived Thursday and hadn't received a call so I just went to the cashier and asked her to give it to me.

The work they ended up doing was replacing the logic board and the airport card.

It's working fine now. Not the best customer service experience I have had, but the store was a madhouse, so I can slightly understand.

Just got my 15" 2.53 Unibody MacBook Pro back from the AppleStore in London...took it in to get the known issue of the Nvidia 9600GT graphics card problems looked at...

They replaced the logicboard. Got it home. "No AirPort Card Installed" and no Bluetooth either. And it doesn't always sleep when the lid is closed.

One problem fixed (well, i hope so) and another problem appears!!

A £1500 paperweight.

Gotta take another trip back to the other side of the city to get it fixed tomorrow...called them up and i was politely told that i should've checked before i left the shop. So next time i'm going to thoroughly check every port, test burn a dual-layer DVD, record some audio with a FireWire interface, set-up an ethernet network... oh, i think Apple should have done that...

And the 'Genius' bar is closed on friday because of the bloody iphone launch.

...so i took another trip to the Apple Store and they were wonderfully helpful. Offered to replace my computer entirely. So we chose the config and i'm just need to wait for it to arrive....

nice service.

Wife's 13 inch Japanese MB just suffered the same problem. Followed the CMDOPT+PR and worked great. I just hope this is the first and last time I see this. Her MB is Japanese and 3 years old. Any fix would result in flying it out the Japan.....

I encountered the same issue. Just remove the extension cache and mac will rebuild it. Simple and got it working in 2 min ( I still don't know the root cause of the problem)

Just do this
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions.mkext

Enter the password and after a minute reboot the system. Good to go!!