27" imac wifi problems (intermittant)

i got my new 27 inch imac in january 2012 for my birthday!.

and since then wifi drops out every day sometimes 30 times a day. its gone beyond ****ing ridiculous!

I have rung up apple twice!! both times they said your not with apple care blah blah rubbish!! but on this case we will let you off and give you advice i was like ok then..... help me.

they told me to unplug my imac switch of my bt homehub and re boot mac using control alt p + r and yes it worked for one day, but thats it!!!!, after the one day the internet drops out kept happening.

what the heck are apple doing, these imac are not cheap in the UK, you pay a high price you expect the internet to work. i have other apple products and they are all fine no drop out, i put windows bootcamp on my imac and even that dont have wifi drop outs.

apple need to get there **** together and fix the problem.

the other advice they gave me was OHHHH YOUR ROUTER CHANNEL is on 11 change it to 1 or 6 or sumthin, so i did that and guess what!!! it didnt work! so i changed my homehub from channel 11 to 1 and no effect what a load of waste that was.

all other fixes people say are rubbish and dont work, unless apple clearly take its their fualt and accept it and fix it then that will be great, other wise my imac will be going back to the store to get my money back. the imac is usless with no wifi connection!!

After getting my iMac back from Appleo on Tuesday night, I`m just starting to get re-occurances on the previous issues.

It`s hanging when trying to open a website and loses the wifi connection again.

I`ll be calling Apple tomorrow and hopefully looking at refund.

Hi folks, back again!

Well like the rest of you it's not got any better. Tried all fixes, still drops etc.

I have decided to name this OS 'Carrier Pigeon' rather than 'Lion' inkeeping with the speed of the wifi and animal names that Apple opt for.

If this issue was with iPad or iPhone it would be fixed within a week, however since iMac's probably don't pull in much revenue at all in comparison to the others (and their app revenue) it is fair to assume they are looking at only spending money where the money (billions not a couple of million) comes straight back in again.

I am still within the first year of buying this machine, I am giving it another month, if no fix then I am asking for a replacement based on faulty goods. I would recommend the rest of you don't put up with this crap, you paid top money for your machines and you deserve better service and transparency from Apple, not the current corporate crap that they seem to have taken on recently where they don't admit a problem officially even though any engineer or advisor you speak to admits there are a lot of people in the same boat!

I think a few days with no computer waiting for a replacement is less a pain in the *** than having a computer in front of you operating OS 'carrier pigeon'. If the new machine (mostly likely will) does the same thing I will most likely opt for replacing OS 'carrier pigeon' with OS 'round house' when I decide to volley the machine through the wall! 😉 Or in reality replace it with a name I dread to utter! Please Apple don't make me say it!!!!!

http://forums.macworld.com/index.php?/topic/145537-wifi-problem-imac/

I found this. Please go to others forums. This an https forum, i think search engine will not find this information.

I like rhe guy who posted on the macrumours

I like apple but when wifi s not working i cannot use airdrop.

Believe me i have tried many solutions, and onky our imac fails even the windows pc work with the apple router bougt last week

Spread the word, so we find a solution

I have the same problem with my 27" iMac, and I'm afraid I have to pour cold water on all of the suggested solutions thus far.

To be clear, at my desk sits my Mid-2011 iMac running Lion, a 2009 MacBook Pro running Lion, a 1st-gen iPad, a 3rd-gen iPad, a 4th-gen iPod Touch, and a BlackBerry.

All of these devices have no problem connecting to my AirPort Express except the iMac, which constantly drops its connection.

The only way I can get a reliable connection on my iMac is to tether to my MacBook Pro, which is ridiculous. Using the WiFi Diagnostics Tool, both computers show the exact same WiFi signal and noise, but only the iMac constantly drops its connection.

I've reinstalled the latest 10.7.3 combo update, the latest iMac WiFi update. I've deleted all of my existing WiFi configurations and passwords, created whole new network locations. Nothing works.

What did seem to work was moving my AirPort Express into the same room as my iMac. With a very strong Wifi signal the problem seems to be less apparent.

Again, of all my devices only the iMac has this problem, and both my MacBook Pro and my iMac report the same signal strength. It seems that the iMac just cannot deal with anything other than an extremely strong wifi signal.

Except that if you used Windows on your iMac there would also be no problem. It appears to be both a hardware AND software issue - it only affects iMacs, and it only seems to occur on Snow Leopard and Lion - there are some very incorrect setting or parameters in these programs which interface with the iMac's already weak (but not problematic on Windows) Wi-Fi reception ...

My iMac is being returned to Amazon tomorrow and I`m prepping it to go back.

I`m removing user files and the wifi has been working quite well.

I`m curious... for those who are having problems, did you use migration assistant from another Apple computer as I did?

Cheers!

I also used migration assistant from an old computer. However, I also did so with my my Macbook Air and don't have the problem there.

I bet it could be related though.

Hey Darren,

I have the same exact issue. I was wondering if you got this resolved. if yes. how did you get to connect properly.

I am soo p@+@±** at Apple for not dealing with this..they deleted 2 posts of mine as I was getting emotional... well how about the face of the store manager when 20 of these aliminimum bricks start piling up on his return desk.

Did you start a blogg.... this news has to get out there !

I just got off the phone with the apple store in Towson Maryland, I dropped my iMac off there over a week ago and finally today decided to call them. They told me that it has been done since the 24th and that they tried to call me but my voicemail was not setup (which it is) and when they couldn't reach me there that they emailed me *The only emails I have from that day is apple telling me to buy my mom an iPad for mothers day and emails from this thread*. Mark told me that after hours of testing they could not get my iMac to reproduce the wifi issue I had told them about, so I asked if I could bring my router in so that they could see and fix my computer. Mark told me that unless it's an apple router I can't bring It in for them to test it out *convenient*. All this lead up to my final question, so mark, did you guys do anything to my computer? No, of course not so now I get to drive the three hours to Towson mall to pick up the exact same iMac I dropped off over a week ago and when I get home I know that it will have the exact same problem. I am so sick of apple jerking all of us around like this. This issue needs to become known so that I don't have this stupid overpriced paperweight sitting on my desk. If someone starts a lawsuit I would like in on it, I have started keeping notes on my interactions with apple and I suggest everyone do the same. I want to use this information to get what I deserve which Is a working computer, and if that means helping someone take this sham company to court then I am in, please reply to this and I can send you my email or phone so we can figure things out. At this point it is not looking like apple cares about this issue, and I am thinking that they will probably be doing nothing about it. So it is now time to take things into our own hands people.

For what it's worth. I have a 27 inch iMac Mid 2010, iMac11,3 -- Lion 10.7.3

Since I got it in September of 2010, it has had "intermittant" WiFi problems.

I happen to use an Airport Extreme Base Station (802.11n 2nd generation), Airport 7.6.1

Basically, it seems to run for around 30 hours and then looses the ability to see any WiFi networks. Where I live, I have 6-10 different networks which come and go, including 2 coffee shops -- but the iMac looses the ability to see any of them. Interestingly, iStumbler can see them. I have to cycle the iMac's WiFi to get it back... sometimes. Other times, I have to power-cycle the Airport Base station to get the iMac to re-connect.

Through all this, both my iPhone (3gs) and iPad (1st generation) continue to work with no problems, AND my old 15 inch 2007 iMac, as does a PC directly connected via Ethernet to the Airport. So the problem is clearly an issue with the 27 inch iMac.

The problem did get better with the 6.0 AIrport upgrade (7.6.1) and yes, I kept Airport Utility 5.6 around. 🙂

"Better" == Mean time between fairlure (MTBF) went from a fairly predictable 26 hour cycle to a seemingly random 30+hour cycle. And sadly, nothing ever shows up in any log I've looked at that might indicate any kind of problem.

I have learned -- if I'm planning on any intense MMO playing -- to power cycle the iMac BEFORE I start my gaming session.

I think that is a great idea Ehlevated. Thousands of us cannot be wrong, there is a problem with this product and Apple thus far, has not been responsible in admiting to the problem. 100 different routers, internationals ISP connections, we all have the same problem... I am being forced to use a slowered wifi protocol just get. That's not why I bought the iMac for. Can anyone do an iReport and submit it to CNN social news site?

I wrote about this on ZDNet back in February. 21 people felt strongly enough to comment, only 15 RT'd it.

Apple won't take much notice methinks.

I first posted about my problem with dropped wifi on February 27/12.

It's now over two months later and even with help from a couple of Apple folks I still get the dropped wifi signal.

Many times I come back to the computer and there is no wifi signal. I thought it was something to do with energy saving so I turned off "put the hard disk to sleep when possible", "wake for network access" - still didn't help.

If I notice there's no signal I turn wifi OFF and then ON and it seems to come back. When it happens it seems to just keep doing it and doing it - then it will be fine for days - then I'll come home other times and find that it's possibly been off all day because my e-mail accounts just show a ~ beside them all and no mail is downloaded.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR..................

I guess I can take it to Apple but I'm not hopeful. Meantime, the 2007 iMac never has these problems. 😠 And they are 7' away from one another. The iPads never have this problem, Apple TV never has this problem and neither does my iPhone when I run it on wifi!

This is totally maddening.