MacBook Pro (Late 2008) Wireless Issues

Please, can somebody post the specific config File, I have to delete to make my WiFi running??

It's not a very good solution to delete all my preferences and lost my settings 😟

I've been fighting these same issues with my MacBook Pro purchased Sept 11, 2008. Wireless signal is strong but connection fails or drops shortly after connecting. Connects again if I hover curser over the Network Icon on menu bar but, connection drops within a few seconds.

I spent several days making changes to my Belkin router settings to no use.

I was on the phone with apple (on hold) when I decided to try a new guest password for the wireless connection. I changed from a password of 12 mixed letters and numbers to a password of just 8 lowercase letters. Now it works like never before! My wireless network has not failed me in four hours now. I will continue to test for the week and let you all know next week if it still works fine.

This may not fix the problems that some of you are having but, it should help a few. Good luck and God Bless.

Message was edited by: Hudson Plass

Add me to the list of folks affected by this problem. I've tested on the following networks. Some networks work flawlessly, but the 'bad' networks either experience massive drops/timeouts or I'm unable to connect at all.

(Note, all these networks were tested without problems with my iPhone, an IBM T43p, and a new 13" MacBook)

Tested good:
Cisco 1231 (a/b/g) IOS - WPA2 Personal
Cisco 1131 (a/b/g) LWAPP - WPA Enterprise

Tested bad
Cisco 340 (b only) VxWorks - no encryption
Cisco 871 (b/g) IOS - WPA Enterprise
Apple Time Capsule - no encryption (Apple Store)
Apple Time Capsule - WEP encryption (Apple Store)
ATT WiFi @ Barnes & Noble

Message was edited by: mountaineer-2001

As you can see by your statistics the Apple routers are not working good with the MBP. That is really annoying that Apple cant even fix the problem for those atleast.

Anyway has someone noticed any improvements since you installed the new EFI Firmware 1.6?

I installed the 1.6 update, but I do not see any improvement related to the poor wifi behaviour on the MBP Alu (the other MBP non-alu just besides me just works fine).

Ok, Fellow frustrated mac users. I have had "some" success with the wireless issues I was having. Some of you aren't going to like it though. I tested moving my router and still had the issue. Then I tested moving my MBP and noticed an almost instant correction of the problem. I would place the MBP back and the problem would come back within a short period of time. So then I tried changing the channel the router was using (suggestion from earlier in the topic discussion). This seems to have improved my connectivity and data exchange rate (if I am describing it correctly) to an almost undetectable problem. My MBP sits on a desk with several Hard drives and an AT&T 5.8 ghz digitalplus 2 line phone. My assumption is that the signal sent to the few handheld cordless units throughout my house was interfering with the signal. I will try to report back to let you know if the problem persists regardless of my recent changes.

No change with the 1.6 EFI update.

A lot of people with new iMacs are having the same problems. Seems the only thing that has really worked is to take it back to the Apple store and have a new airport card put in.

For me it actually seems to work now after the EFI update. I wont get my hopes up to much but I have been running solidly 2 days now with a WPA network at home.

muddy07 wrote:
Just got a brand new MacBook Pro and I'm constantly dropping my wireless connection at home unless I'm right next to the router (1TB Time Capsule). All other Macs in my home including my old MacBook Pro, iMac, and iPhone work fine.

Sometimes the system shows that I'm connected (full signal), but I can't get to the internet. Other times it shows a full signal but I get prompted to rejoin the network and I can't connect (even though it is showing a strong signal). My old MacBook Pro works just fine in the same location.

The only difference between this machine and the old MacBook Pro is that it support "n" wireless. I thought the issue might have been problems with the new AirPort Extreme Update 2008-004 update. Because the machine is brand new (and I had nothing to lose), I reinstalled OSX from scratch. It didn't solve the problem.

At this point, I'm thinking I have a faulty airport card and/or antenna. Any other ideas?

With the recent EFI and SMC updates I still had drop outs and the inability to even connect to my Airport Extreme 802.11n Fast 100, not the newer gigabyte version.

I saw a post here where someone had success by changing the channel on the AE until they found a signal that gave a steady connection. I now enjoy a similar connection to the MBP 2.4 I had prior to getting the uni-body 2.5.

I am very happy with the performance now and steady connection.

I am using WPA2 Personal encryption.
The Channel I am using is 149
Changing the channel in the AE seems to be locked at Automatic when using any encryption. By Simply holding down the Option Key and clicking on Automatic will now offer you the ability to change the channel.

Hope this helps.

The 10.5.6 update didn't help at all.

34 packets transmitted, 19 packets received, 44% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 3.359/21.479/180.689/40.873 ms

I think I'll just bite the bullet and get a replacement.

Message was edited by: mountaineer-2001

I was having this problem today, intermittent with my 10.5.6 update. I was connected over ethernet trying to figure it out, went into my settings, renewed my DHCP lease, still wasn't working. I unplugged ethernet and ran diagnostics and it worked fine ever since. I'll have to see if this works at school as that's where it first gave out. Thanks for the tips everyone, saved me a trip to the apple store!

Not saying to anyone that the problem is definitely fixed because the problems seemed to be all over the map, but I too had been having a LOT of problems with wireless connectivity but I haven't had any since the firmware fix last week and still no problems after the 10.5.6 update. I used to have no problems in one room and continuous problems in my living room

So it seems Apple is making progress on this problem since nothing has changed in my home environment.

If you are still having problems after applying all the updates, report them to AppleCare so they get logged.

Have you installed the Combo Update 10.5.6?

I installed the Combo (about 600MB) and it seems to be fixed. Running my Machine in a 2,4 GHz Network with mixed Mode WPA+WPA2.
My MacMini in WPA with 54MBit and the Macbook Pro with WPA2 and 130Mbit.

My wireless connection (via Airport extreme) is working really well - 12" from the AE router!

Otherwise it is a cycle of problems connecting to my network (despite iPhone and Touch displaying full signal strength), "Connection Timeout"and "invalid password" (it isn't) over and over until Airport randomly connects.

Then 4 bars strength and RSSI -60 and MBP refuses to connect to internet via anymeans; a cycle of rebooting and eventually I get a connection - briefly.

Not sure that this is hardware, as the airport is detecting neighborhood weaker signals before my network is detected,and even with full signal strength Aiport Utility denies than there are any apple wireless devices detectable (there are 3).

I've installed 10.5.6 and all EFI/SMC updates, and there isn't any improvement.

Is this a problem with Airport Extreme users, or are all Routers Affected?


I hope/trust that Apple have noticed the issue and have something clever up their sleeves!