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10.6.5 and wifi issues

Since I upgraded to 10.6.5, my MacBook Pro (Early 2006) cannot connect to my USR9110 (802.11 g) access point.
From 10.6 on, there's been always troubles when resuming after sleep, but now even at startup the connection goes timeout.

All other devices (an iPhone,an iPad and a MacBook Pro (Late 2006) with 10.5) work perfectly.

I tried rebooting, changing the wifi channel, updating the access point firmware, turning on and off airport, resetting the SMC, switching to WEP, switching to WPA, switching to unencrypted. Nothing changes, connection timeout.

MacBook Pro 1,1, Mac OS X (10.6.5), early 2006

Posted on Nov 11, 2010 5:53 AM

Reply
496 replies

Dec 26, 2010 2:22 PM in response to John K.

John K. wrote:
I have a first generation 17" MacBook Pro (2.16 Intel Core Duo). I also had a problem with flaky wifi connectivity. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling my airport drivers, trashing my system configuration files, repairing permissions and voodoo rituals, but nothing would keep my internet connection from going down (airport menu would say it was connected, but pinging my router would reveal timeouts...)

The only thing that has worked for me was to run Disk Warrior to repair my directory. It was a measure I tried out of desperation. I don't know why it worked, but it did, and now my internet connection is as fast as ever. If you have a copy of Disk Warrior, you might want to give it a try.

Interesting that DW worked as it is a file structure repair utility. Wonder what file was not available to the computer that was required for wifi to run well? Did you have indications of disk problems before you ran DW? There have been people recovering wifi performance after repairing permissions, which again implies some needed file could not be accessed by the OS.

Dec 26, 2010 2:28 PM in response to Spydermann

Spydermann wrote:
Is this Forum hosted by Apple?
Does anyone from Apple read it?
Has anyone ever received a reply from Apple from something they've posted on this Forum?



An "engineer" from apple did email me in response to my post. After walking me through some command prompts to give him information, he said that my signal was not strong enough and he stopped helping me.

Now, I've found that if I sit right next to my router my wifi will work MOST of the time (still occasionally drops) but I can't get a connection in places where I guess my signal is not "strong enough" although in the past I have been able to get a good connection in these same exact places. It's as if the update made airport less able to connect to weaker signals?

Dec 26, 2010 3:49 PM in response to lebooo

I think you're on to something on this. It seems the new OS is more discerning when it comes to WiFi signal strength and interference. I know that I have a crap load of networks in my neighborhood that I used to see when scanning. Now only two show up so it must be filtering these others out somehow.

If I go right next to my router, I can get connected. Moving any reasonable distance (like 15-20 feet) and the MacBook can't keep it together and drops the connections, getting that radiating wave icon in the Airport display.

I understand the need for Apple to make things compliant with 802.11 specs but this has made my very simple home network unusable now. What't the point in having a laptop if its tethered?

Perhaps an option to use "strict" wireless handling versus "play nice with others" or something like that so we can all get back to using our computers? Apple?

Otherwise I'm forced to get some stupid USB solution to this.

-ashley

Dec 27, 2010 3:39 PM in response to matteocaldari

This is probably more for the Apple devs more than anything else, but on my own Linux-based access-point running hostapd, I'm noticing that there's problems with the WPA GTK rekeying:

Dec 27 23:27:59 hostname hostapd: wlan0: WPA rekeying GTK
Dec 27 23:27:59 hostname hostapd: wlan0: STA 00:23:6c:xx:xx:xx WPA: sending 1/2 msg of Group Key Handshake
Dec 27 23:27:59 hostname hostapd: wlan0: STA 00:23:6c:xx:xx:xx WPA: EAPOL-Key timeout
Dec 27 23:27:59 hostname hostapd: wlan0: STA 00:23:6c:xx:xx:xx WPA: sending 1/2 msg of Group Key Handshake
Dec 27 23:28:00 hostname hostapd: wlan0: STA 00:23:6c:xx:xx:xx WPA: EAPOL-Key timeout
Dec 27 23:28:00 hostname hostapd: wlan0: STA 00:23:6c:xx:xx:xx WPA: sending 1/2 msg of Group Key Handshake
Dec 27 23:28:01 hostname hostapd: wlan0: STA 00:23:6c:xx:xx:xx WPA: EAPOL-Key timeout
Dec 27 23:28:01 hostname hostapd: wlan0: STA 00:23:6c:xx:xx:xx WPA: sending 1/2 msg of Group Key Handshake
Dec 27 23:28:02 hostname hostapd: wlan0: STA 00:23:6c:xx:xx:xx WPA: EAPOL-Key timeout
== Connection is dropped ==
Dec 27 23:28:12 hostname hostapd: wlan0: STA 00:23:6c:xx:xx:xx WPA: event 1 notification
Dec 27 23:28:12 hostname hostapd: wlan0: STA 00:23:6c:xx:xx:xx WPA: start authentication
Dec 27 23:28:12 hostname hostapd: wlan0: STA 00:23:6c:xx:xx:xx WPA: sending 1/4 msg of 4-Way Handshake
Dec 27 23:28:12 hostname hostapd: wlan0: STA 00:23:6c:xx:xx:xx WPA: received EAPOL-Key frame (2/4 Pairwise)
Dec 27 23:28:12 hostname hostapd: wlan0: STA 00:23:6c:xx:xx:xx WPA: sending 3/4 msg of 4-Way Handshake
Dec 27 23:28:12 hostname hostapd: wlan0: STA 00:23:6c:xx:xx:xx WPA: received EAPOL-Key frame (4/4 Pairwise)
Dec 27 23:28:12 hostname hostapd: wlan0: STA 00:23:6c:xx:xx:xx WPA: pairwise key handshake completed (RSN)

When this renewal fails, the wireless connection is reset (as shown above), causing the network to drop momentarily as the whole WPA key process is re-initiated completely. This doesn't happen with my iPhone, PS3, PC or AirPort Express when the GTK is renewed, only the MacBook, so there's definitely something wrong with 10.6.5, as 10.6.4 was perfectly fine.

John

Dec 28, 2010 7:20 AM in response to JohnM75

Tracing hostapd is fine, but a wireless sniffer trace would tell you a lot more. For instance, you could tell if the eapol key is actually broadcasted over the air. You could also see the Mac Books response.

If you would like to get really clever, time sync your linux AP, your sniffer and your mac. Then turn on airport debug for the mac with sudo /usr/libexec/airportd debug +alluserland +alldriver + allvendor. Start your sniffer. Wait for a group key change, then you could see exactly what was going on on both ends and over the air. If the Mac is not responding to the eapol key message, it will say why. Furthermore, you could file a radar through an ADC account with the logging/traces attache with Apple.

Dec 29, 2010 2:31 PM in response to matteocaldari

To briefly recap my experience on a similar issue of being unable to connect to a wifi router from a white Macbook under Mac OS X 10.6.5, thus the internal Airport card, I've changed my WEP password to WPA on all our machines, and tried all sorts of other things, all to no avail, but as my Wifi works OK on the Windows XP-Bootcamp side of my machine and on our PowerBook G4 under Leopard, my iPod Touch 3 and my son's iPhone, the Airport card on this machine and the router are both eliminated as causes, leaving only the Mac OS X update 10.6.5 as a possible cause. Why would 10.6.5 put more demands than previous updates on the router? I use 802.11g, not n. On a Belkin Wifi/Ethernet router with the firmware kept up to date.

For more on this, see
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12631919

BUT THEN I saw somewhere (probably on one of the Apple forums) that someone with this problem, but who had a Windows system with Bootcamp on his machine, on which his WiFi worked properly, found that after re-starting from the Bootcamp side, but in the Mac OS X side of his machine, his Wifi worked again straight away. Just as it did for me after initialising the new WPA password on it.

I have just tried this AND IT WORKS!!!

Total mystery.

I have yet to try another recipe of turning off the IPV6 in the preferences, but that recipe only worked once for the person who noted it, Todd, in
http://osxdaily.com/2009/09/01/how-i-fixed-my-dropping-wireless-airport-connecti on-problem-in-snow-leopard/

BUT then after about an hour of inactivity, I came back to my (still open and awake) machine to find the Wifi connection gone again - could the fact I had re-plugged in my Ethernet cable have anything to do with it?

I see there are a few things recommended in this forum that I have not yet tried, but not many - for example DrVenture's Ping test, and using DiskWarrior, in my experience one of the best recovery tools around.

I shall continue to look for a solution, I hear Cupertino is coming back from Christmas and New Year holidays on 3 January, and I certainly don't expect a solution from the First Aid people or the Genius bars - there's almost certainly more expertise in this forum than most of them, this is no longer about diagnostics and work-arounds on the basis of what exists, it is clearly an Apple 10.6.5 update problem that only those with access to the code and the logic behind it can solve.

Dec 30, 2010 3:29 AM in response to matteocaldari

Hello,

I've had the exact same problem on my macbook and it really ****** me off ! I tried all of the solutions written in this forum and none worked for me ! I was really starting get mad especially that my macbook is quite new...
And the thing is i have no Apple Store where i live which is a pretty F ***g problem so I had to wait for vacations to go to france where I took my macbook for check at the apple store...

I just came back right now and my wifi works till now a least far much better than before...The guy was really nice he checked everything and he tried all the solutions on this forum too..Finally he tried to boot from one of '' apple's '' usb that has suberb booting systems...And it worked so finally he re-installed 10.6.5 as it was '' corrupted '' with wifi bugs ! For that he needed to delete everything on my macbook ! GREAT !

After 15 minutes the installation was done and it started like when you buy a new macbook !

And VOILA the Wifi came back to normal !

Hope this helps...

If you have this problem go and see Apple Store or re-install yourself 10.6.5 !

Thanks !

Dec 30, 2010 10:42 AM in response to mathepod

If this still does't work try this :


turn airport off.

system pref.>network>select airport>advanced>delete your preferred networks in the list......make sure tcp/ip is set to DHCP, which is what most routers/modems default to.

machd>library>preferences>systemconfig.>delete '.com.apple.airport.preferences.plist'

reboot.

turn on airport.

rejoin your network and if you're using wep on a small home network, put a $ before your key.

This may help you if a message like " self assigned IP address '' appears !

Good Luck

10.6.5 and wifi issues

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