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27" imac wifi problems (intermittant)

I really wish Apple had email or online support...

I have a 27" i5 imac that I bought just before Christmas, I had lots of problems with the wifi on it, it would not connect and when it did it was very slow, all while my macbook and iphone in the same room showed full signal and a fast rock solid connection. I rang Apple support, it took ages but they were very helpful and eventually we solved it and in the end it seemed to be WPA that was the problem and whilst I was not happy switching to WEP it seemed to work so I went with it.

Fast forward a month or so and I have started having problems again, it is fine when I boot but as the day goes on it gets slower and slower before finally refuses to connect at all. I am wondering if this could be something over-heating but in truth I am puzzled.

Anybody else having issues?

imac i5 27" and macbook, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Feb 21, 2010 3:11 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Feb 21, 2010 5:31 PM

I am having the same exact problem. Bought a 27 inch iMac about a month ago, the wireless connection was a little slow off the bat, but then I was able to fix it. Recently after turning it on the signal is picked up fine for about 15 minutes and then all of a sudden the airport can no longer pick up any wireless network. Meanwhile my iPhone and MacBook have no issues. I called apple support and they had me complete a litany of useless diagnostic tasks - emptied my cache, did a hard reboot, repaired disk permissions , etc. None of it helped. Seems it's a hardware issue. Anyone know if this is a known issue with this model? I'm afraid the airport card itself may be defective in some way.
443 replies

Aug 2, 2010 10:31 AM in response to neil74

hello
I have had similar since buying my new imac a few months ago and have had a new machines, card replaced etc and continue to have the problem. I have an iMac 24" and a few macbooks and all work perfectly with my time capsule including at the same desk the new iMac is located on. i have contacted apple and referred them to all these posts when they claim not to have seen my issue before. they advised that they cannot rely on postings on the discussion groups to direct their work as they do not have sufficient details. If you have not already done so please contact the technical support disk as this is clearly a problem that is widely reported but apple don't seem to know what to do about it

Aug 3, 2010 4:27 PM in response to neil74

Hello everyone.

I have a 27" i5 imac that I bought just before Christmas, I had lots of problems with the wifi on it, it would not connect and when it did it was very slow, all while my cheap net book, iphone, xbox , ps3 etc in the same room showed full signal and a fast solid connection. Iv tried everything to try and resolve this. (with no success)

Today has been the worst day ever! I have been unable to connect under mac osx or windows 7 (bootcamp) this makes me think its not really a software issue. So i tried the one thing i really haven't tried! i moved my imac just a little bit. IT WORKED! My imac connected straight away!

This was only half the problem. Although i now had a connection it was really slow. (couldn't watch a youtube video). So while trying to load a youtube video i tilted the screen all the way up and it loaded in seconds! With the imac in this position i can stream HD video no problem. This is really frustrating as its not really practical.I think however this shows in my case anyway that there is no actual fault.

Try this out and let me know if it works for you. Im going to have to rethink the my entire room set up to try and accommodate this!

Aug 8, 2010 9:16 PM in response to neil74

kk guys, so after scouring the web for a solution to a similar problem i finally managed, i think to fix it. it is alot simpler than u would imagine but i think this may solve it, ive read that the aluminium cases cause issues with the wireless connection and that the adaptor on the imacs is placed directly behind the logo on the back of the imac so as to let signal through. when i had these issues i noticed that the imac worked alot faster online when the back of the imac was facing the direction of my router and it worked alot slower when it faced the oposite direction. make sure the back of the imac is facing the position of the router otherwise the connection will be really slow. When i did this my download speeds increased from a mere 3-5kb/s (unbearable) to a decent 1mb or so. So this caused a drastic improvement and i hope u guys can solve ur issues in the same simple manner.
Safe.

Aug 10, 2010 2:40 AM in response to Oshanda

I'm now in a situation where Apple and Netgear both claim it's not their issue.

My computer is back from the repairer with no improvement. To be fair, he spent a lot of time trying to resolve the problem. But I've spent far too much time on it.

I notice that there is another discussion topic on this forum dedicated just to problems in trying to get the DGN2000 to work with MACs.

I'm going to buy an Airport Extreme and a new modem and I will see how that combination works.

Darren

Aug 10, 2010 7:19 PM in response to neil74

Appears that I am not the only one having this problem.

Unwrapped a brand new iMac 27" I7 today, had trouble connecting to my local WiFi. Airport Status shows full bars but no internet connectivity. My MBP sitting next to it, has no issues connecting to the WiFi.

Finally, after turning Airport On and Off multiple times, I was able to connect to the internet. I then downloaded a 750+MB Software update and rebooted the machine. Unfortunately, I have not been able to connect to the internet from the iMac ever since.

Browsing /var/log/system.log it shows the following sequence repeat when I turn Airport on from off:
<snip> configd13: network configuration changed.
<snip> mDNSResponder34: RegisterInterface: Frequent transitions for interface en1
<snip> UserEventAgent105 ** ERROR: SCNetworkSignatureCopyActiveIdentifiers returned nil

HELP ... the iMac is useless without Wireless internet connectivity.

Aug 10, 2010 8:23 PM in response to nuevodesi

Here is a workaround that has worked for me thus far. I am using Static IP addressing as opposed to Dynamic.

The way to do this is via System Preferences > Network > Airport > Advanced > TCP/IP;

On the TCP/IP tab, select "Manually" for Configure IPv4; enter a Static IP address on your subnet (e.g. 192.168.1.15), the subnet mask (e.g. 255.255.255.0), the router gateway IP (e.g. 192.168.1.1); On the DNS tab assign the router gateway IP (e.g. 192.168.1.1). Finally Click 'Ok' and then 'Apply' on the Network Tab.

Let's see if this work around lasts.

Hope that works for you all as well.

Enjoy ...

Aug 15, 2010 5:56 AM in response to Oshanda

Well, I'm back to square one. I bought a new Airport Extreme and a modem and connected everything up.

The iMac 27" worked for all of about 10 minutes and then stopped recognising my home WiFi network and now can't discover any networks. All of the other computers, phones and game consoles connect just fine.

I'm a couple of hundred dollars out of pocket and no better off.

I'm going back to Apple to re-open the support case.

Darren

Aug 16, 2010 6:43 PM in response to neil74

Hey guys, wow I am happy this isn't a unique issue to me. I thought my wifi card was at fault. Guess its some sort of a early adopter issue, driver problem or something eh?

So here is my symptoms.

My mid 2010 imac with a core i7 that I just received a week ago doesn't work well with 5ghz wifi range.

It won't come start up with a 5ghz wireless N signal upon startup. When I do a continuous ping to the wifi router im connected to when it finally does come up which takes multiple reconnections, because the logon associations stalls out, it periodically has delay's in the the 600ms +. I switched to 2.4 ghz and that is better but I still have issues. It will logon with it, but I do find myself with periodic packet drops etc.

It's frustrating, but considering the randomness of it, I doubt its a hardware issue. I can't be getting 100 percent signal now,

I am starting to

Aug 16, 2010 6:46 PM in response to cranbers

I would like to clarify I also own a Mac book pro, bought August 10th 2010 as well, and that has none of the issues mentioned. It stays connected to the wifi hotspot with 5ghz, a the 2 ms response time range consistantly, there are absolutely no symptoms like the Imac 2010 has with its wifi card.

I am using a linksys wrt610n

Aug 16, 2010 7:04 PM in response to cranbers

Here is my wifi setup:


Software Versions:
Menu Extra: 6.2.1 (621.1)
configd plug-in: 6.2.3 (623.1)
System Profiler: 6.0 (600.9)
Network Preference: 6.2.1 (621.1)
AirPort Utility: 5.5.1 (551.19)
IO80211 Family: 3.1.1 (311.1)
Interfaces:
en1:
Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x168C, 0x8F)
Firmware Version: Atheros 9280: 2.1.9.8.1
Locale: FCC
Country Code: US
Supported PHY Modes: 802.11 a/b/g/n
Supported Channels: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 36, 40, 44, 48, 52, 56, 60, 64, 100, 104, 108, 112, 116, 120, 124, 128, 132, 136, 140, 149, 153, 157, 161, 165
Wake On Wireless: Supported
Status: Connected
Current Network Information:
chadnetwork1:
PHY Mode: 802.11n
BSSID: 0:25:9c:d2:5b:40
Channel: 6
Network Type: Infrastructure
Security: WPA2 Personal
Signal / Noise: -56 dBm / -96 dBm
Transmit Rate: 130
MCS Index: 15

Aug 18, 2010 1:33 PM in response to neil74

Well good! I thought I was the only one with the wi-fi troubles with the 27" i5 iMac. I got this lovely thing 8 months ago during christmas. I've been wired ever since, but I moved recently into a wifi connection area, and now as I go to my network settings, there isn't even an Airport option. I went to add>airport in the list, and there isn't an option for airport. Just Ethernet, Firewire, and the two different Bluetooths. I tried Airport Utility and it doesn't even say there's a wireless connection around. And while I type this on my Macbook Pro directly in front of it with 5 bars. I sure hope I didn't melt my AirPort card!

27" imac wifi problems (intermittant)

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