Q: No AirPort card installed!??

Pym,

I do not have this extension, strange and why? what s'ld I do then? :o

Hi all,

MBP 13 2010, had this annoyance since almost the beginning.

No permanent repir seems to be available, I have now changed my HD and installed Lion.

All fine for A week at least, but once again the card 'disappeared' ie: impossible to turn it on.

This happened again after closing the lid and putting the MBP to sleep.

I gently 'massaged' the dark plastic cover under the hinge an restarted: and Airport Card is back!

(Seems that the antenna cable (nap) for the AP card runs trough there)

I'm happy that my MBP operational again but amazed that Apple does not aknowledge this problem?

Ok if repair was attempted and you just install lion then you have a system corruption that was transferred with lion. I would do the following

Remove the System configuration folder from Mac hd/Library/Preferences folder and then restart machine

Then go to network preferences and reselect your network.

teppdude2,

So, clean install will not help, that's what you mean? Because, I'm ready to clean install after a thousand troubleshooting tried included what bradley169 mentioned, still the same!

teppdude2 wrote:

 

I gently 'massaged' the dark plastic cover under the hinge an restarted: and Airport Card is back!

(Seems that the antenna cable (nap) for the AP card runs trough there)

 

Could you please give me some idea how you do that and I'ld like to give it a try on my MBP 15", thanks and appreciate!!

Hello,

You will find somewhere (don't have the link handy)  pics of an opened MBP.

So you'll see that tha antenna cable for the Airport card runs by the hinge up the frame of the screen.

If our prob is 'connectix' oxydation or coming loose, maybe just touching it gently re-establishes the connection.

So that would be done 'externally' trought the dark plastic cover on the hinge at the base of the screen.

Also I believe that once the motherboard has "lost" contatc with the card, you'll have to run any of the 'routines' that happen at boot,-or such as reset pram relaed stuff...or plain reboot.

That worked for me!

I'd almost hope that it's only that kind of simple connection prob, a connection that becomes loose after a while.

If that's really the case: the remedy would be easy next time Apple or whoever opens your otherwise BELOVED MBP 15!

I cross my fingers for you

teppdude2,

Thanks to your prompt reply!

So, did you mean I might need to open up the unibody as the link below http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installing-MacBook-Pro-15-Inch-Unibody-Late-2008-and -Early-2009-Airport-Card/6274/5 to "touch gently" to the connection?

Nope,

I suggest that you don't open if you're under some warranty.

I could 'feel' the cable and the connection close to the hinge side. Maybe that would be enough to reconnect all the points?

If you feel like doing it: follow the instructions in your link, buy an air/aerosol to clean the connections etc..

I'd suggest you start by just exerting little pressure through the dark plastic.

And reboot.

Tell me if that worked.

Thanks! :D Btw, I've try tO disk repair with MBP Original Installer, the airport card now c'ld be able to turned on! Strange!! I suspected the system files might be corrupted. Do you think a clean install will helps? Installer Disk (Leopard), SL in standalone Disk. Which to go?

Iwe tried it all, am Lion right now. (all reinstalls of SL, reset combos etc...)

As i said earlier Lion worked fine for a week, until -on closing the lid- the card disappeared again.
Been probing the card cable through the plastic and now it's back.

I'd suggest you 'normal' install (keep your files) Lion and go from there. You can buy Lion online, no need for disk.

See what happens, if corruption is gone...

Then try the physical probing of the card, maybe it's a strange mix of all those factors.

PS: do not get afraid if your Mac acts kindof funny for a couple of hours after install (it's doing some 'private' indexing behind the scenes) once that's done, Lion's a breeze, I love it.

Help!!! I had no issues with my Mac Book Pro for the last 2 years, It was all working fine. I had gone to Goa for a business trip for a week and I used the cable for the internet and when I got back to Mumbai and tried using my Wi-5 it says NO AIRPORT CARD. I tried copule of things but i just can't get the Airport card.

Hello Sunny,

The only cure to this i have found working is simply exerting pressure on the black plastic cover on the hinge of the screen.

For exemple yesterday "No Hardware installed" (this is what it says on Lion) showed again.

I pressed the black cover and rebooted: the card was there !

It seems that this could be caused by a simple physical connection that becomes loose?

Even though i have now this solution, I think Apple should address this prob since it seems quite widespread.

in response to the following question that was deleted along with my previous reply:

• Thanks for your suggestion. In fact, I'm happy to download the Apple80211Monitor.bundle today and replaced IO80211Family.kext from the downloaded folder. After restart my Mac, Panic Kernel showing and however I force shutdown and turn it on again still Panic!!! It shown something like unable to access the platform.
• What s'ld I do now? I wish to repair with SL Installer, but it's not with me now. Any better way to repair it? I did not empty trash yet, that means the original kext still in my trash.
• Help!!!! :((

Restore your original IO80211Family.ktext, or you can find another copy of it just googling that name. When I downloaded the update it just prompted me to install and I followed the prompts to intall it, there was no need to perform extra steps messing with the 802.11 wireless settings.  It worked like a charm for me once I got around to installing that update when nothing else would fix the missing airport card problem.  I guess thats why Apple removed my post telling people how to fix it cause they want you to bring it into them and charge you obscene amounts of money to fix issues. I was proud to be a new memeber of the Apple family, now I'm pretty darn glad I purchased a broken macbook pro on the cheap and just fixed it myself so I didn't give Apple a dime of my money.

That's cool, Haaa...

Unfortunately, I c'ld not log into SL, in fact, it still in panic kernel situation. Try to Safe Mode, still Panic Kernel. So, I can't do anything like software update!

What s'ld I do in the next now? Repair by using SL installer?

I have the same problem. i'm using a 2011 version of macbook pro with os x lion running on it. i reset my SMC and PRAM, opened the computer and nothing was popped out. please help me.

MacBook Pro 2011, OS X Lion (10.7.1)

I had this problem with my 3-month-old Macbook Pro off and on for the past 3 weeks.  I tried everything in this discussion and several others.  Sometimes the airport card would show up, sometimes not. I finally took it to the genius bar and after some diagnostics, they took it to be repaired.  The repair description says "Display panel or Assembly - Connector/Port/Cable issue".  (So, btw, the guy who said to massage the black strip on the back of the computer might not have been as crazy as he seemed).

I think what's going on here is that there is a short in the connection to the card, so sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Those of you who zapped the PRAM or repaired permissions and said that it was fixed, might have had a software issue that indeed got repaired, but I think it's more likely that it worked because when you have a short it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.  For a while before I got it fixed, I would just restart the computer and it would sometimes come back, so it's possible that just restarting, along with some physical movement of the machine, was what was (probably temportarily) fixing it rather than any software mumbo-jumbo. 

I say if you get "No airport card installed" take it to Apple or send it to Apple.  Mine was under warrenty, but I noticed that the total charge even if I hadn't been was $280. And it was back in 2 days.  So don't make yourself crazy trying to fix it yourself.

And get AppleCare.