You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

mayfi944 Author

Level 1

12 points

MacBook won't connect to the internet!!!

I recently switch wireless service at home to At&t.

Since, my computer "connects" to my network, accepts my password, and shows full signal, but when I open Safari, or any other app that requires internet, I just get the "failed to open page because you are not connected to the internet" page.

My roommates connect to use our wireless network with their PC's just fine, and my Mac connects to other wireless service at school and work and works just fine.

I have been on the phone with At&t many times trying to troubleshoot and fix the problem. No success.

Apple charged me $49 to talk to them, with no success.

I HAVE ALREADY TRIED RESTARTING both my Mac and my router, I have reset the router, I have restored original settings in both Safari and my router, I have tried removing the security from our network in order to connect without a password, I have tried re-configuring the router to work with Macs....all no success.

I am very frustrated with the situation as I, like most people, require internet access for both school and work.

Any help, tips, or advice on the situation would be grateful.

Thank you.

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Jul 10, 2010 9:39 AM

Top-ranking reply

AMelillo

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Feb 21, 2017 3:26 PM

I just purchased a brand new MacBook Pro today and spent my first four hours with it struggling to connect to wifi. After trying every solution I could find, this one finally worked. The solution I found (https://community.bt.com/t5/Connected-Devices-Other/BT-INFINITY-wifi-loss-on-Mac Book-Air-ready-to-quit/m-p/1160960#M7876…) noted that Macs often run in to trouble connecting to wifi when there are identical names assigned to 2.4ghz and 5.0ghz frequency bands.

To fix this problem: access your wireless gateway (For Xfinity users: go to 10.0.0.1 by typing it into the browser of a connected device, enter username: admin pwd: password <-defaults for all xfinity customers) and modify the SSID for the 2.4ghz frequency (e.g., add an 's' to the end of the network name). Then, restart your computer and voila, you should be able to connect. (I still can't access the original network name—the 5ghz frequency—however, I'm able to access the newly named 2.4ghz variation of the network, and it works perfectly).

Hope this saves someone else the headache!

View in context

211 replies

Sep 5, 2010 11:34 PM in response to Rigelface

That worked! Thanks.

Macbook Pro 10.5.8

Drk_Mtr

Level 1

9 points

Sep 7, 2010 12:08 PM in response to Rigelface

I seem to be having the same or a similar problem. I just started to experience this issue about two days ago, but had to wait until today to call my ISP because of the holiday. They indicated that the problem was with my computer because my IP isn't reflecting the change from wireless to ethernet connection. Unfortunately, the fix detailed here didn't work for me. Any other suggestions? I'm currently using my phone as a modem to connect and even that is acting a bit dicey now. Thanks in advance.

Drk_Mtr

Level 1

9 points

Sep 7, 2010 12:16 PM in response to Drk_Mtr

I also seemed to stumble upon a solution myself. I turned my firewall off and was able to connect to the internet. My IP addresses for the various connections have now automatically reset. I hope that helps anyone else experiencing that same issue.

Sep 18, 2010 10:46 AM in response to Drk_Mtr

I have a similiar problem. After installing 10.5.4 from a dvd the wireless connection didn´t work anymore. I tried any of the suggestions made in diverse forums( pref delete, airport delete, keychain new, resetting the router, changing channels, opening the network without a password, trying the assistant9 even rang up apple hotline but nothing worked. So finally i installed again 10.4.6: no problem. After that I reinstalled from the dvd, this time without deleting the old system prefs: no connection via wlan. ethernet works , the imacs, the other mac book, the iphone and the ipods we got have no problem either- only the one mb with leo. Any idea perhaps concerning some terminal issue?

Nov 4, 2010 12:45 PM in response to Rigelface

Your solution is perfect - thanks a million!!!! Really thanks.

Litlhorn

Level 1

0 points

Nov 7, 2010 5:12 PM in response to mayfi944

Me too Me Too!!
My IMac Flat screen G4 is having trouble with it's reading of the wireless signal.. Every morning when I log on and try to open the Net, although I have full bars registering on my airport and it shows it is connected to the proper network, I get an error saying "Server not found." I have a pc sitting right next to it that logs on fine. The only way I have found around this is to unplug the modem and negear Router downstairs, and then replug and it seems to be fine until I shut down and then the next morning the same drill. Tried all the above mentioned Fixes and it seems to be something in the Way the Airport extreme card is reading the signal. Am at a loss and very frustrated with this. Does anyone know what is really going on with this since it seems to be happening to so many?
Imac Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Nov 9, 2010 1:38 AM in response to mayfi944

Hi I've been having this problem for weeks and its particularly frustrating because you can see that the wireless is picking up a signal but failing at the network settings stage.

THIS WORKED FOR ME

Go to system preferences
On the top row click on security
Click on firewall
Highlight - Allow all incoming connections

Internet now working! (hopefullly for you too)

The other method here also worked for me once - the one about deleting and re-introducing Airport into your network settings.

Hope one of thos works for you - it's been braining me!

Jan 13, 2011 10:26 AM in response to mayfi944

removing airport and adding it back in worked for me. nice trick

Jan 13, 2011 2:15 PM in response to nudavinci64

you can also check to see the the DNS settings in your Network Preferences are correct. i found 5 settings (numbers) in my list. the top two were the same as on my other mac - which is working fine - and they were grey. the bottom 3 were in black and did not match the other machine. i erased the bottom ones, applied the changes and everything now works properly.

Mar 18, 2011 1:05 PM in response to mayfi944

I don't know if anyone will be helped by this, but the Macbook problems connecting to the internet are directly related to DNS issues. I discovered this after an upgrade to the OS X Lion preview.

The symptoms are as follows: a macbook (pro, mini, etc) can get an IP address from a DHCP server on any given network, but can not connect to the internet, even though other computers on the same network have no issues. If this sounds familiar, read on.

The problem is not related to 3rd party products, routers, Airport settings, locations or public vs private DNS servers, and you don't need to reset SMC or PRAM.

You will need to use terminal and you DO NOT want to use disk utility to repair permissions.

The most direct way to fix this is to copy the com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist and com.apple.mDNSResponderHelper.plist files from an internet connected Mac into your /System/Library/LaunchDaemons directory.

(You should know that it probably doesn't matter what version of OS X you have or the other Mac has, you just need the files.)

Next you will need to change ownership of the files just copied (ex: chown root:wheel /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist and chown root:wheel /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponderHelper.plist)

Then, you will need to set correct permissions (ex: chmod -R 755 /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist and chmod -R 755 /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist)

The last thing you'll want to do is to verify that the ownership of the files copied is set to system (and maybe wheel) using "Get Info." (Conversely, you can use ls -l /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist to verify owner and permissions.)

You should not have to restart to connect immediately to the internet.

Jun 28, 2011 7:00 PM in response to Rigelface

Thank you thank you thank you rigelface. This actually worked! It's quite astonishing that in the nine months since you posted this people are STILL having this issue!!!

MeMatt

Level 1

0 points

Aug 16, 2011 4:39 AM in response to mayfi944

I was having this problem at work but not home. I fixed it by turning off File Sharing in the Sharing screen of Preferences. I'm thinking that it's some sort of security thing with the company WiFi. Now if I could figure out how to do the same for my iPhone4 I'd be all set...kind of maddening because a colleagues iPod Touch works fine.

Cheers.

Aug 23, 2011 9:03 AM in response to mayfi944

I've been having this same problem for almost a week now! Everything else in the house is able to connect to the internet wirelessly...PCs, iPhones, iPad, but my macbook won't connect. Removing and adding Airport worked for me temporarily but I've had to do it 5 times since yesterday and it doesn't even work every time. When I open network preferences Airport is green and says "connected", but I can't open any webpages or anything else. This is so frustrating because this happened out of the blue. I didn't touch any preferences or my router and modem, didn't update anything or install anything new, so I don't understand why this suddenly started happening!

Any other solutions??

BDAqua

Level 10

245,231 points

Aug 23, 2011 1:05 PM in response to Mich_Efro

Hi Mich,

If nothing here works, you'd likely get more helpers in on it if you start a new question.

Open Network Utility, see if you can Ping this IP...

74.125.127.99

Aug 24, 2011 9:13 AM in response to mayfi944

Thank you BDAqua. I actually JUST got off the phone with Apple tech support and they seemed to have fixed my problem (we'll see how long it lasts...). They first suggested removing and re-adding "airport" in network preferences, but i had already tried that and it wasn't working for me.

For anyone else who's still having this problem, this is what I was told to do after that:

Open Finder

Click Macintosh HD, Library, Preferences, and then all the way at the bottom: System Configuration

Drag the System Configuration folder into the trash and restart your computer

Go to airport and reselect your network

That did it for me!

MacBook won't connect to the internet!!!