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

SocialGen

Level 1

5 points

Posted on Mar 19, 2012 6:59 PM

Wow. Same problem. Like often happens when a Mac quirk shows up I just wasted hours of my life and finally got it to work. I'll share the steps I took. First it worked two days ago at the same coffee shop, the only thing that had changed was the password, however no matter how many times I entered the password in the different forms. Nothing. All I got was a not connected... due to the "self assigned IP address" message. I attempted the tricks that people posted here: 1) Turned off and back on the wi fi ... nothing 2) restarted the computer... nothing 3)I went into System Preferences > under TCP/IP I changed the Configure IPv4 to "Using DHCP Manually" and used an IP address close to the one from my other mac which was connected just fine... almost nothing... the green light went on and it said connected under wi fi in the left panel of the preferences... but no actual connection 4) I changed the Manual IP address to Match my working Connected Mac... almost nothing... the green light again went on and it said connected under "wi fi" in the left panel of the preferences... but no actual connection 5) I deleted "Wi Fi" from the left panel and recreated it using the + and - buttons on the bottom of the left pane and hit renew DHCP address, but it recreated the same 162... IP as before and still not working 6) I changed the from a 162... to a 192... nothing 2) I hit Renew DHCP Lease... nothing same IP.

Then...

Here's what finally worked: Again in System Preferences>Network> I turned Wi-Fi off, Went to Advanced>TCP/IP>Configure IPv4 and changed it to off, hit "OK", Highlighted Wi-Fi in the left column, hit the - sign on the bottom left, deleting it, then hit the + and created it. I got a message saying there is no assigned IP address so I went back into >advanced>TCP/IP and turned on Using DHCP, Hit "Renew DHCP Lease" and it finally created a brand new IP address 10..... and if finally F'n worked.

Jeez Apple get it together. This is a ridiculous problem.

I hope my struggles actually help someone

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211 replies

Oct 19, 2011 6:05 PM in response to mayfi944

guys , i totally need help for this .. im using a macbook air for school to do my course online and its ******* me off becaous i cant connect like the others . i connected once and theres a login page for the wi fi acess that pops out for security purposes . but the next day my connection says im connected to the network but i cant use internet becaouse the log in page doesnt pop out anymore .. solving this will help me pass for the course .. thanks guys ....

Nov 15, 2011 11:39 PM in response to BDAqua

How do you start a new topic? Sorry, I just joined because of this issue.

My MacBook with 10.6.8 can't connect to the internet, but my sister's macbook pro with 10.5.8 connects just fine(I'm on this now). Her iPad also connects fine.

I tried the deleting the airport from the list trick, but then when I created the new one it just turned yellow and I still couldn't connect. I also tried the prefences in the trash trick, no luck. I tried getting the DNS info to match the DNS info on my sister's laptop, didn't help. Diagnostics have the last two( internet and server) as yellow (green on the working laptop) and when I complete the diagnostics, it turns red and says failed.

The really strange thing is, the internet worked until about 10pm, and then just stopped working. the same thing happened yesterday. (Mind you, I'm only talking about my MacBook, not the other devices that have no issues). Hopefully it will work fine again tomorrow morning, but this is so frustrating. Also weirdly, I connected to internet on the troublesome macbook with an ethernet cord just fine yesterday, but now it doesn't work. I want to pull my hair out.

Nov 18, 2011 3:34 PM in response to its an addams

A huge thank you to user "its an addams", your March 18, 2011 TIP on page two fixed my problem perfectly . . . however I did have to restart for the changes to take effect.

Thanks again!

Note: Another symptom that this particular machine had was that not even Airport would connect to the internet either.

Nov 21, 2011 9:47 AM in response to mayfi944

I'm hoping someone can help me. I have a Macbook Pro and it was working perfectly fine until Saturday when I was rearranging things and I had to unplug the wireless Modem and Cable modem connection to get the wires unravelled. I plug them both back in and now I can't connet to the internet on my network. I can connect on some other unsecered network. My wireless network doesn't even show up as an option. And on my phone it says that my network is out of range. I have unplugged the wireless several times, restarted the computer, turn the airport on and off, clicked join another networkand put in all my information and it still doesn't work. I'm so frustrated!! I can't imagine that having unplugged everything screwed it up that bad. Please help!

Samerrr

Level 1

0 points

Dec 1, 2011 10:17 PM in response to mayfi944

Wow can't believe many other users are having this problem.

To begging, I have MacBook pro lion (2011) brought couple of months ago. Ihave realized this problem was happening on/off especially when you put yourmac to sleep. Today I was at home and got fed up with 'restarting the router'due to no connection, even though I clearly see the router and my iphone4s isconnected to the same network.

I have briefly tried to follow as many posts as possible such as"removing/adding the airport (Wi-Fi on lion)" but the issue stillexisted, I also tried to go to library/preference/ --system configuration (so Icould trash it as someone suggested, but I couldn’t find the systemconfiguration folder on lion. Can someone PLEASE help..btw this happens attimes outside, for example at a coffee shop.

Cheers!

BDAqua

Level 10

250,253 points

Dec 1, 2011 11:12 PM in response to Samerrr

Hi, I have Lion but detest it beyond words, I kindly suggest you try asking in the Lion forums to get better help from those LIon users! 🙂

https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/mac_os_x_v10.7_lion

djt_1

Level 1

0 points

Dec 2, 2011 1:02 AM in response to Samerrr

Samerrr,

I found my preferences.plist file in the Mac HD/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration folder.

I tried a spotilght search for the file, but it didn't reveal anything useful.

Not sure I can add anything else.

Dec 10, 2011 3:55 PM in response to simonsach

Simonsachs fix WORKED. This is coming from a Mac 10.5.8 user who couldn't connect to their home wifi AT ALL while iPhones and an XBox could for almost 6 months. Thank you so much!!! What a simple fix! 😀

vja4Him

Level 1

5 points

Dec 20, 2011 10:41 AM in response to mayfi944

I have a similar issue with Safari on my Mac Pro 2.93 Ghz, running Snow Leopard 10.6.8.

When I reboot the computer, Safari doesn't work at all until about two or three hours later. So I have to use another browser. I prefer Safari and like Safari and would like to continue using Safari ....

I'm using Safari 5.1.2. Can't go back to any of the older versions, unless I downgrade my Operating System, which I can't do, for obvious reasons ....

I've tried resetting Safari, trashing the plist. Trashing Safari and reinstalling.

As long as I do not reboot, I can quit Safari and restart Safari and it works just fine. But everytime I reboot the computer, Safari will not work until two or three hours later ...

This problem has been going on for many months now ... Any suggestions? Has anyone else had this issue and found a solution ... ???

-- Jim

London2

Level 1

0 points

Jan 26, 2012 7:55 AM in response to Sparksparadise

I've got the same problem. Took my Macbook to an Apple Genius Bar a few weeks ago and they had to reinstall everything to get it sorted. Just now, I've been bumped off the internet again, unexpectedly, and am back to the same error messages. Very frustrating. I have a partitioned hard drive and I can connect no problem on the PC side but need to connect on the Mac side. Aaarrrggghh.

Jan 26, 2012 9:16 PM in response to mayfi944

I'm having the same problem here with my MacBook. It's running version 10.5.8 right now. I tried deleting airport and readding, tried deleting the system configuration file and restarting with the trash bin empty. Right now it says I'm connected but I can't access the Internet via safari or Firefox. Checked all my settings and applied them per everyone's instructions. Etc. The past few days this has been happening and if I turned my airport off and back on it would work, but now nothing. Ahhhhh. Please help! Thanks :)

BDAqua

Level 10

250,253 points

Jan 31, 2012 1:14 PM in response to Jcoll33

Hi there,

Feel free to open a new question to get the most helpers on to your exact problem.🙂

This tread takes way too long to load & read through, I think you'd be far better off...

https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/mac_os_x_v10.5_leopard

condie1

Level 1

15 points

Feb 25, 2012 5:31 PM in response to mayfi944

I have a similar baffling problem.

New Mac mini with Windows 7 and XP on Parallels.

Invariably when I click a link, after a Google search for example, I get the cannot connect error.

But copy and paste the link into IE I connect!

Could it be a Lion glitch?

Apr 18, 2012 11:49 AM in response to zacharee

Another MBP with sleep = can't connect to wifi. Usually when I have this problem I can get back to my network after attempting to connect to others in my list. Today, it didn't. Neither did trashing preferences, networks, nothing. It finally just came back after numerous restarts and letting the computer "rest" ... so in other words magic. This has been a known issue with MBP for many OS updates, why has this problem not been fixed!?

iPingu

Level 1

0 points

Nov 7, 2012 3:08 PM in response to mayfi944

Any suggestions for the following?...

iMac cannot connect to internet through browsers (Firefox & Safari). Several other devices iPhone/iPad/PCs all fine on home network with no recent changes made. Cannot obtain IP address through DHCP but assigned manual IP address and can ping local and internet address e.g. 8.8.8.8 or google.com.

Tried wireless and wired connection to router. Reboots of Mac and router etc. but no luck!

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Also I've copied DNS server addresses that are being used on iPhone and there are no proxies set. Can ping router but not access it through browser.

A real head scratcher hey?

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MacBook won't connect to the internet!!!