Does Snow Leopard break your wifi?

Having twice reverted to OSX 10.5.8 in frustration because of the wi-fi problems with Snow Leopard I appear now to have resolved the problem.
During my first two attempts with SL, I managed to upgrade to 10.6.1 via 'Software Update' despite the intermittent and flaky internet connection - all to no avail as the wi-fi problems remained.
Having reverted to 10.5.8, I downloaded the 10.6.1 Update package to disc, reloaded SL and then upgraded to 10.6.1 manually.
Everything now works like a dream and is super fast.
Why this should be I do not know but it may be worth others trying this.
I will keep my 10.5.8 bootable clone for a few more days though, just in case 🙂

I love how someone said this thread is way to long to actually read for a answer to his problem, here is a link to a similar thread that is ten pages long! http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9EPNMZ8P

Now this very much is an issue with many people using MacBook Pro's specifically but they are not the only ones. Snow Leopard also seems to have something to do with it. For me personally, I've had this problem well before Snow Leopard was even announced. This is with a replaced Airport card, replaced router and other ISP equipment, and eventually a replaced MacBook Pro (by Apple). Here is what I did that has so far fixed the issue for me, not I'm only about two weeks into it after the "fix," however, this is the longest it's worked at 100% since I became a Mac user. Hope this helps someone, and if it doesn't check out the other thread for many more tips...

"Long story short, in effort to fix the issue of the WiFi not connecting on campus, tech support had me put in the Snow Leopard Install Disc and boot from the disc, and if I can connect to WiFi in this manner it will help narrow down the possible conflict and of course it didn't help me there. But I decided to do this at home about a week+ ago and since my drop-age has stopped. I don't know why, I didn't really do anything, and I really don't care. I suggest to everyone having this issue to boot from the install dvd, connect to the WiFi network that is giving you issues, then reboot back to your OS and see if the problem is still there. Could have been a complete fluke, but I figured I'd post just incase it helps anyone"

My wife's macbook has had serious WiFi problems recently - speed problems which come and go... it can be pretty much out of action for hours at a time.

We're pretty sure that the problems coincided with the Snow Leopard install.

We took it in to the Genius Bar and didn't behave very badly - I walked away with pretty much no conclusion except that a clean install might be worthwhile.

Anyway, once I got home again I tried it on the home WiFi (which works fine for all of the PCs connected to it and used to work fine for the MacBook).

I noticed something very odd - the Mac retrieved the wrong IP address via DHCP. I say "wrong" because all of our kit is assigned a specific IP address handed out via DHCP. Then for visitors there is a DHCP range from 192.168.1.200 upwards - and the MacBook got one of those.

This should never happen since the mac address of the MacBook airport card should always get IP 192.168.1.121. I logged into the router which runs the DHCP server to find out how it had got that IP and found that the router saw the DHCP address containing mac address "42-00-00-00-00". Almost as if the MacBook had forgotten it's address. I checked Network Preferences and the mac address looked fine.

This did not seem to be a coincidence - I managed to get the wireless working again by putting the machine to sleep a few times and plugging the ethernet cable in and out (not sure which made it work). I rebooted the router so that it cleared the dynamic DHCP request and waited for the WiFi on the MacBook to go bad again. The "42-00-00-00-00" address had shown up again on the router.

When the MacBook is in the "mode" I see a massive number of send and receive errors reported by the WiFi access point. (1000's compared to 10's).

It's as if the wireless card loses the mac address but the rest of the system has no idea.


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Message was edited by: apri

forum1983 wrote:
I love how someone said this thread is way to long to actually read for a answer to his problem, here is a link to a similar thread that is ten pages long! http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9EPNMZ8P

Now this very much is an issue with many people using MacBook Pro's specifically but they are not the only ones. Snow Leopard also seems to have something to do with it. For me personally, I've had this problem well before Snow Leopard was even announced. This is with a replaced Airport card, replaced router and other ISP equipment, and eventually a replaced MacBook Pro (by Apple). Here is what I did that has so far fixed the issue for me, not I'm only about two weeks into it after the "fix," however, this is the longest it's worked at 100% since I became a Mac user. Hope this helps someone, and if it doesn't check out the other thread for many more tips...

"Long story short, in effort to fix the issue of the WiFi not connecting on campus, tech support had me put in the Snow Leopard Install Disc and boot from the disc, and if I can connect to WiFi in this manner it will help narrow down the possible conflict and of course it didn't help me there. But I decided to do this at home about a week+ ago and since my drop-age has stopped. I don't know why, I didn't really do anything, and I really don't care. I suggest to everyone having this issue to boot from the install dvd, connect to the WiFi network that is giving you issues, then reboot back to your OS and see if the problem is still there. Could have been a complete fluke, but I figured I'd post just incase it helps anyone"

Sorry that link about should have been this: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2142725&start=0&tstart=0

Wow, that's a strange one eh? So how far into an install did you go...if at all? What screen did you get to? Some more details on this secret apple fix would be nice for a client friend of mine...who unfortunately does not have his new MBP install disk with him,,,but I am thinking that maybe any install disk would work in the same version range? ha!

coocooforcocoapuffs wrote:
Wow, that's a strange one eh? So how far into an install did you go...if at all? What screen did you get to? Some more details on this secret apple fix would be nice for a client friend of mine...who unfortunately does not have his new MBP install disk with him,,,but I am thinking that maybe any install disk would work in the same version range? ha!

First of all I just booted from the SL install disc and right after the first screen that asks for the language setting you are able to click on the Airport icon in the menu bar. Then once connected to the network giving me trouble I clicked on the Utilities menu and then opened up Network Utility and pinged a website to make sure it can actually connect to the internet (since you cannot open Safari.) After that I just rebooted to the Macintosh HD and it worked for almost two weeks. Then it started up again, so they told me to try and reinstall the OS. So a couple days ago I booted from the install disc again and opened Disk Utility to format the HD to take everything off, then did a fresh install of Snow Leopard. Downloaded all the updates, reinstalled all my programs, etc., and all that work for nothing because I still have the problem. Don't waste your time with a clean install.

What a drag for u...sounds like hardware now:(