10.6.5 and wifi issues

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

Yup. That's the ONLY thing that worked for me. After days of messing around and trying literally hundreds of solution and changing every conceivable setting, the ONLY thing that worked was formatting my drive and going back to 10.6.4.

I actually went through the reinstall process twice. I wondered if formatting my hard drive and reinstalling everything afresh would cure the problem. So, I reinstalled everything up until the previous version, 10.6.4. WIFI was fine with 10.6.4. I then updated to 10.6.5 and the problem returned immediately.

I then went through the whole thing again, this time stopping at 10.6.4, which was again fine.

I have been having the same problem. I didn't have this irritation on Snow Leopard 10.6.4..

I have it when I boot up as well as coming off from Standby.. I kept entering the wep key over and over, but recently I have started cancelling the 'Join Network' window and 'Turn Airport Off' from Top Menu bar and then 'Turn Airport On' and it picks up without any problem..

Very irritating, something in the 10.6.5 patch is screwed up...

Hmmm well if you have the possibility to quit using wep and opt for wpa/wpa2 opt for wpa2 instead of wep. Wep is crippled anyway.

But try also the 8-9 step fix described earlier. One interesting thing I did mention earlier was tha changing channel might help, as It did for me then, is nothing else but a temp. workarround. I've resetted my router to default factory settings and re configured. Everything works now on any channel.

The most accurate clue is that setting files on the Mac gets corrupted removing them and setting up an other ssid will help you get fresh wifi settings on your Mac. And that seems to help for most of those having troubles.

But some Apple representant have recommend a shift from wep to wpa2, if nothing else that is at least a good security recommendation.

Spirit-chaser wrote:
I have been having the same problem. I didn't have this irritation on Snow Leopard 10.6.4..

I have it when I boot up as well as coming off from Standby.. I kept entering the wep key over and over, but recently I have started cancelling the 'Join Network' window and 'Turn Airport Off' from Top Menu bar and then 'Turn Airport On' and it picks up without any problem..

Very irritating, something in the 10.6.5 patch is screwed up...

There are some apple support pages that might help.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1819

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2975

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1344

But the consensus is that WEP is so weak that you should go to WPA or WPA2

Unfortunately, I have been having the same problems as everyone else in here. I am a new Mac user and extremely disappointed. I bought my MacBook Pro 15" a few weeks ago and have had nothing but problems with wifi connection. However, the strange part of it all is that my wife began having he same problems with her wifi connection on her Dell (vista) ever since I brought home my Mac. I figured it was my 4-5 year old 2wire gateway router, so I called AT&T and they sent me a brand new one (free of charge), but I'm still having the same problems.

I changed the channel to 6 and changed from WEP to WPA2 as recommended above and so far so good. But, I will see what happens tomorrow when my wife and I are on both computers at the same time (seems to be when the problem occurs the most). I'll keep you guys updated....

Your description sounds like an IP conflict situation, I doubt It is as you seem knowlegable about the system. But try if possible to assign specific IP with MAC address filtering to both computers. Make sure also that you are routing and not bridging the connection.

Having let a "friend" use our WiFi I had to change the encryption password, adding an extra character.

After reading the last Apple advisory of your list, I have made it 13 characters again, even though I use WPA 2 Personal security. The connection seems better but maybe only for renewing the settings, time will tell.

I use 63 char, that will give u the strongest encryption

The fact that it affects the Dell points to a router issue, no doubt triggered by MacOS. It could be the same problem I had where the MacOS was crashing the DNS relay service on my router. A work-around is to set a public dns server for the Mac, such as OpenDNS or google's 8.8.8.8 See my earlier posts.

So far everything has been working since the last change, but I will also try changing to Routed Encapsulation. Which one do I want, though? Routed LLC or Routed VC-MUX?

magillaru wrote:
Unfortunately, I have been having the same problems as everyone else in here. I am a new Mac user and extremely disappointed. I bought my MacBook Pro 15" a few weeks ago and have had nothing but problems with wifi connection. However, the strange part of it all is that my wife began having he same problems with her wifi connection on her Dell (vista) ever since I brought home my Mac. I figured it was my 4-5 year old 2wire gateway router, so I called AT&T and they sent me a brand new one (free of charge), but I'm still having the same problems.

I changed the channel to 6 and changed from WEP to WPA2 as recommended above and so far so good. But, I will see what happens tomorrow when my wife and I are on both computers at the same time (seems to be when the problem occurs the most). I'll keep you guys updated....

Once you sort through some of the other suggestions (I agree with their analysis) and you still have problems, call Apple. You get free support with new equipment.

Well, I'm actually lucky enough to have an apple store right up the street from me and that was the first thing I did....they ran a test of everything and said it all checked out and there were no problems. So, I moved onto the new router, which still didn't solve the problem. However, since I made the changes listed above, I haven't had any problems (keeping my fingers crossed). The changes I just made though will be my last attempt at trying to solve this problem myself. If I continue to experience problems over the next couple of days, I'm going back up to the store and demanding an explanation and resolution!

Thanks for all your help guys!

*Still not sure which routed encapsulation to use, though......any suggestions? (I currently have it on Routed LLC, which seems to be working so far so maybe I won't mess with it! No need to fix what isn't broken (at least not right now. haha))

Well ur question is to advance for me, i just go with the router defaults.

take your router

Because different solutions seem to have worked for different people, it isn't clear the issues reported in the thread are all the same. But I have two different D-Link routers. Tried all the suggested actions with each. Nothing really worked. So I am sure my problem wasn't the router setting. Furthermore, my airport connection was working consistently just fine before, so something in the system update must have messed it up.


The symptoms of my airport problems were simple: I could connect fine. Airport successfully negotiated DHCP connection with the router. But in the middle of network activities (browsing, ssh, etc.) the connection would randomly and unpredictable drop out. The wifi icon indicated it's connected. Network Preferences showed the correction IP. But no connection, couldn't even ping the router. Renewing the DHCP license didn't help. To reconnect, I had to turn off and turn on airport. This happened enough times that it was very noticeable, though intermittently and unpredictably.


Then I found this link:

http://www.silvermac.com/2008/airport-connection-dropping-off-how-to-fix-it/

Simply removing ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.internetconfig.plist seems to have fixed my problem. Now I have a persistent airport connection, just as I had before the system update without altering any of the router's settings.


If anyone tries this, please report back to share your experience.