MacBook Pro (Late 2008) Wireless Issues

We have 2 new MBPs (late 2008) and 19 iMacs (purchased in June 2008) that are all experiencing this problem. We thought we were having WiFi problems.

Our older MBPs (2007 and early 2008) work fine.

My June 08 iMac is having the same problem. When I get home from work and wake it, it's signal connects initially at a very weak strength. I am forced to turn off Airport and switch it back on to fix the problem. At random intervals the problem occurs again.

I have been trying to get the wireless working on my asus eeepc 901 under Linux, and I was running into the same issue as people are mentioning.
I also have a 2008 iMac which had the issue.
I tried different drivers, changed operating systems, and played with router settings.
I noticed that some of the router settings would fix for short periods of time. Changing the channel and also forcing 802.11g.
802.11n worked the best for me, but my not all of my computers are n.
I found out shortly after, that if I unplug my 2.4GHz cordless phone, which was close to my router, my signal strength on my router is boosted by ridiculous amounts. I replaced it with one of the new Dect 5.9GHz cordless phones, and it actually made the issue worse.
I know this is not a solution for many of you, but routers and some phones use 2.4GHz transmissions. And if you live in an area that has tons of wireless networks like me, your issue may be the same as mine was.

Same Problem here. My old MBP sitting right next to my new one does just fine. The signal strength indicators are always full, but the connection just drops out occasionally. Turning off/on my airport will yield a temporary fix, but sometimes the connection drops out as often as every two minutes.

I take solace in the outstanding track record Apple has for customer support. I am confident they will identify and fix the issue soon, if not give us all new machines.

I think this must be a hardware issue because not everybody is having this problem and if it was software related you should be able to do a clean install and it should fix everything. I bought an IMAC two months ago works fine but other people seem to be having issues and I purchased two late 2008 macbook pro and one of them keeps dropping signal right out of the box. My personal opinion that this is hardware related and not software. No matter how many software updates apple comes out with I don't think it will fix the problem and this is one of the hardest things to prove at the apple store for the Geniuses to exchange the notebook. I'm going to try and return mine today and see what happens.
Good luck everyone.

I agree that this could be very well hardware related. In a post in this thread some time ago I wrote that I can reproduce this wireless problem by just plugging in my firewire drive. When I unplug it, everything works perfect again.

Am I the only one where the wireless network does not work when a firewire drive is connected (to the MBP, not the AirPort. When the drive is connected to the AirPort everything runs fine)?

I've been having a terrible time with my Macbook Pro since one of the recent updates. Wireless was aok for over a year and then 'boom'... wireless is suddenly terrible. My tower (wireless card installed) purrs along with no issue. My MBP is useless now.

Anyone heard anything yet? It had to be a recent update - what other explanation can there be??

Same for me. This is a really annoying issue. I've tried resetting the router, my PRAM, repairing in Disk Utility, restarting, everything in the book - nothing. Hopefully this is resolved in an update SOON!

My problem is like yours. I got rid of my TimeCapsule thinking it was the problem. Installed a LinkSys router. Problem persists. I bet I won't get to the end of this message before it cuts out again. Brand new machine.And as far as I have read on AppleInsider there is no solution in sight. What to do? Return the machine? I've got work to do and can't live like this.

I'm having the same problem with a brand new machine. This machine replaced my late 2007 MacBook Pro just three weeks ago. Apple replaced the logic board my 2007 model to see it that would fix the problem. In 4 days the new logic board DIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For the first two weeks everything was fine on the new machine, but now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If I'm online for an hour with the laptop, it drops my DSL connection. If I check the connection with my MacPro 8-core tower there is no problem.

What's with this particular machine Apple?????????????????????????????

Never had this problem with my G4 15" laptop.

Very frustrated. The Apple Genius workers have no clue what's going on.

I have been told that it is not Apple's policy to openly admit there are issues. Well, I don't have time for some corporate BS. I've got work to do, and if this issue with this machine doesn't get fixed in a matter of a day or two it goes back to the store. Enough of this!

So you probably should go to the shop on Monday: there's people waiting for Apple to solve the problem since the previous generation of Macbook Pros. There's really no hope.

G.

So, guys, here is how I ended up resolving connectivity issues. Initially MacBook Pro worked fine, until I synced my bookmarks etc through mobileme. Some how I believe some sort of corruption occurred. Apple recommended doing a reinstall. I did a complete reinstall from discs. Everything has been working fine since, and that has been over a week. As of now, I have not resynced anything, as I am afraid I may corrupt something again.

I've been having issues as described here with my new MacBook Pro (Late 2008), namely even when showing full strength connection signal and being only 3 or 4 feet from the base station the network connection doesn't work and the only apparent fix is is to turn airport off and on the MacBook.

Connectivity was completely dropping off while the system was actively in use (e.g. playing World of Warcraft) and was happening fairly regularly (roughly every hour or so) and so was easy to replicate. It was also not always working on 'wake from sleep' (and again I had to turn Airport off and on again on the MacBook Pro to get connectivity again).

I tried repairing permissions as I had seen that 'fix' suggested - that did not work for me (I think that is specifically a fix for a different problem than the one described).

The problem for me was only evident when connected to an Airport Express 802.11n network, running in mixed mode for b/g compatibility (on 2.4Hz), so I decided to tweak the Airport Express base station settings.

I am now running the base station in 802.11n ONLY mode (on 5 Ghz). This is a bit annoying for me as it means I can't use the same wireless base station with my iPhone or X-Box 360 when the base station configured in 802.11n mode. I am disappointed and hope a fix comes soon, but I am not all that surprised as it's not the first time I've had compatibility problems with WiFi when running base stations in mixed mode.

So, it seems tweaking your wireless base station settings - specifically to not run in mixed mode - may be a suitable temporary fix, if you can put up with the lack of backwards b/g compatibility.

Note:

As I have not done detailed testing I should note that is not clear if it's that not running in mixed mode that has resolved the problem of that it's gone away because I'm now running on 5 Ghz. As far as I know right now, it could be either that triggers the issue, but I would suspect the former (and I prefer the faster throughput of 5 Ghz to the range/robustness of 2.4 Ghz in my situation in any case).

I should have read this follow up more carefully before posting my own findings below. This is exactly what I see on my new MacBook Pro and Airport Express base station.

i.e. Going from 802.11n/b/g on 2.4 Ghz to 802.11n on 5 Ghz fixed the problem for me.

I have not tried interface robustness in mixed mode, so do not know if that also works for me.

Like Muddy I have a load of b/g devices and would rather not run two separate WiFi networks (there are about 6 networks visible where I am already and don't want to add to the noise) - so I am eagerly awaiting for a proper fix.