10.6.5 and wifi issues

Recently upgraded from OS 10.4 (Tiger) with the Box Set and am experiencing all the same issues. Called Apple and they were no help at all !
Does anyone else experience that the WPA2 password keeps getting "lost" too as part of the whole sad scenario ?
Will try some of the fixes your have all suggested, and report back, but I think it is time Apple sorted this out
Thanks all for the helpful thread !

ctmurray wrote:
Great to hear. Several people have found WEP change to solve the problem. It is horribly insecure anyway.

well, it means my router works, anyway...but i guess i should have been more clear- the Wii works fine, but the Macs are still running into trouble if both are attempting to access the router wirelessly at the same time. right now, the MBP is wired directly to router, and i am using wifi/Airport...this works temporarily but it doesnt solve the problem.

null

Message was edited by: nursenicole

So here's my story.

Updated to 10.6.5.

Could get on to my WiFi Network but connection dropped after 2-5 mins. Every time.

I hit the boards and did everything that was suggested (delete prefs, change channel,changed security, deleted old network..etc etc etc) I tried everything.

Nothing worked

Finally called apple. Was refereed to a senior tech support person.
Surprisingly he had never heard of the possible 10.6.5 issue until I told him to look at this string.
After 30 mins of defeat he suggested that I go back to 10.6.4.

He also said it could be three things "Interference, a hardware problem or a software problem"
Yes, he actually said that.

So if your banging your head because you cant get 10.6.5 to wok with Wifi then just save yourself some time and revert to 10.6.4. and wait till Apple:

1. Acknowledges the bug
2. fixes the bug

I feel exactly the same way, mikeyslaw. Coincidentally, I think we have the same model computer. Since the 10.6.5 update, I have now encountered numerous wifi locations where, prior to the update, I was always able to connect wirelessly without any problems. I have spent hours on end troubleshooting this issue. It has been a total rat race and a complete waste of time. For those of us connecting via networks that we have no control over, we our just out of luck. Some aspect of the 10.6.5 is botched, period. This is immensely frustrating.

I'm glad you mentioned the disappearing password syndrome. I find that deleting the network entry in the WiFi preferences "airport" pane and then renewing it, seems to get the encryption password recognised again.

Looking at the Keychain entry under "System" for the network password, I note it relates not just to a particular network name (SSID) but also to a specific location, "where", given by a long reference number. Does this mean that various changes to system parameters affecting this "where" will result in the password becoming unintentionally unavailable as well?

I would have thought the network name and password pair, alone, should be sufficient... but then I am no expert.

nursenicole wrote:

ctmurray wrote:
Great to hear. Several people have found WEP change to solve the problem. It is horribly insecure anyway.

well, it means my router works, anyway...but i guess i should have been more clear- the Wii works fine, but the Macs are still running into trouble if both are attempting to access the router wirelessly at the same time. right now, the MBP is wired directly to router, and i am using wifi/Airport...this works temporarily but it doesnt solve the problem.

null

Message was edited by: nursenicole

Have you run the test where you try to figure out if it is your boy friends mac causing the problem or does the problem exist when two macs are on your router? So you first mentioned you were on running fine and then he tried to connect which caused you issues and he could not log on. Can you try the other way - he is logged on surfing fine and then you try to connect?

This might point out that one computer is causing the issue, or your router cannot handle two connections.

It just hit me that you should check to be sure your macs are not trying to use the same IP address. Do you try to use fixed IP addresses? Most people would have the router hand out IP addresses using DCHP. In the Network Preferences --> Airport ---> advanced buton --> TCP/IP tab, you can see how your mac and his mac are configured, and what IP address they think they are using.

fairaintfair wrote:
So here's my story.

Updated to 10.6.5.

Could get on to my WiFi Network but connection dropped after 2-5 mins. Every time.

I hit the boards and did everything that was suggested (delete prefs, change channel,changed security, deleted old network..etc etc etc) I tried everything.

Nothing worked

Finally called apple. Was refereed to a senior tech support person.
Surprisingly he had never heard of the possible 10.6.5 issue until I told him to look at this string.
After 30 mins of defeat he suggested that I go back to 10.6.4.

He also said it could be three things "Interference, a hardware problem or a software problem"
Yes, he actually said that.

So if your banging your head because you cant get 10.6.5 to wok with Wifi then just save yourself some time and revert to 10.6.4. and wait till Apple:

1. Acknowledges the bug
2. fixes the bug

So he eliminated the possibility of alien life forces...

I am using WPA2 with a Motorola Router and having the same wifi issues after 10.6.5 upgrade on a newer macbook pro. I tried some of the solutions suggested to no avail, any suggestions are appreciated.

Is there a way to open a bug with apple's OS Team ?

vvr wrote:
I am using WPA2 with a Motorola Router and having the same wifi issues after 10.6.5 upgrade on a newer macbook pro. I tried some of the solutions suggested to no avail, any suggestions are appreciated.

Is there a way to open a bug with apple's OS Team ?

http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter/

You have to sign up to be a "developer" but it is free.

On page 12 of this discussion I listed 18 things to try. Can you tell us which ones you tried. And describe your symptoms in more detail. The symptoms sometimes lead to a narrowing of the suggestions.

I have also had massive problems connecting to the internet with my MBP 10.6.4 at different locations at home and abroad over the past few months.

Here are some of the key things that 'appear' to have solved it:

1 - From another forum thread here - Disk Utility Repair Permissions - ( this is worth doing because I noticed that dozens of the 'repair messages' were to do with Airport).

2 - Changing the Router: no one has mentioned the speed or kind of broadband delivery as a possible problem. I was on a 20Meg connection with Virgin Media UK and a Netgear router. This worked fine for years. Then at the beginning of October I upgraded to 50Mg connection and they changed the router to a D Link. I had nothing but problems for 5 weeks continual phone calls to helpline etc. They eventually changed the router to a Netgear and it appears to be working OK.



Subjective Conclusions:

1) there could be some kind of Mac Snow Leopard incompatibility with the service provider's equipment

2) There is definitely something amiss in recent versions of OSX Snow Leopard as I have an older Mac Pro on 10.5.8 whose Wifi Airport has always been faultless

PS I was also told unofficially by a very helpful technician that there is a wall plug in Wifi booster you can buy which routes the signal through the house electricity system like a baby monitor.. and that this is a great solution for boosting weak router signals rather than buying a really expensive router

Life is short, cut to the chase. If you have a lot of time on your hands and want to busy yourself with potential solutions offered in this thread (as I did) have fun. If you want to fix the problem and get on with your life do this (NOTE: I only suggest this if you were working with a previously stable version of OS X 10.6.x):

1. Get your installation disc and reinstall the version that was previously stable.

That's it - reinstall a previously stable version. Forget the rest. I tried other solutions suggested here and none of them worked. I haven't had a problem since doing a reinstall to 10.6.3 from disc, and I didn't have a problem before I upgraded to 10.6.5.

Amen. 10.6.5 is buggy with regard to wi-fi. Rolled back to 10.6.4 on my late 2009 Macbook Pro 13inch laptop and it has been rock solid.

Two more possibilities I have found recently...

1. I changed from ClamXav to the new Sophos antivirus for Mac. Its free, and so it should be because we are beta testers for a clumsy version which seriously screwed my WiFi connectivity. I am back to my old and tried ClamXav.

2. On opening the lid of my MBP the first thing it does is to run the scheduled backup to iDisk that it could not do at the appointed time. The upload of the large compressed backup file always fouls up everybody else's connectivity on the home network until it finishes. I guess this is because the computer is unable to break the upload down into chunks and it stops any effort to multi-task until the upload is finished. Maybe I don't know what I am talking about...

(iDisk upload speeds of 30kbps are normal on my 10Mbps system is this something I can improve?)

OK, just my two bits.

goborobo wrote:
Life is short, cut to the chase. If you have a lot of time on your hands and want to busy yourself with potential solutions offered in this thread (as I did) have fun. If you want to fix the problem and get on with your life do this (NOTE: I only suggest this if you were working with a previously stable version of OS X 10.6.x):

1. Get your installation disc and reinstall the version that was previously stable.

That's it - reinstall a previously stable version. Forget the rest. I tried other solutions suggested here and none of them worked. I haven't had a problem since doing a reinstall to 10.6.3 from disc, and I didn't have a problem before I upgraded to 10.6.5.

Having followed the issue for a long time. Each version of an OS update has resulted in wifi problems. So for example there are people who suffered problems when updating from 6.2 to 6.3, and 6.3 to 6.4 and now 6.4 to 6.5. One conclusion that might be made is that the updating process goofs up something regardless of the operating system revision. Thus the suggestions for repairing permissions, recreating passwords to the router, eliminating old preferences seem reasonable as things an update could goof up.

So your solution is a reasonable one. I think people would be missing some of the new features and bug fixes that come with each revision.

Some of the suggestions are not terribly time consuming and they risk nothing. Obviously if nothing is working your suggestion solves the issue as well.

I had similar issue with a Belkin Pre-N router, I changed the channel from 5 to Channel 1 and that fixed my issue. I also set it to broadcast in B,G & N.