10.6.5 and wifi issues

I think you may be referring to me about posting a fix earlier. On 10th, I posted that the issue was between the wireless card and the router with plenty of evidence to back it up and what a possible fix was (not "the fix") and I was not impressed with the responses, especially one of them. I'm glad someone noticed it. I was thinking all my hair-tearing was going to waste.

Just hope Apple look into this although it doesn't appear to be an Apple specific issue.

Do you know or think it will work with the Broadcom firmware?
Updated to 10.6.6 and wish i didn't as i wasn't having any problems before:(

I just wanted to let you know that I solved my wifi problems...

tenortim (Page #23) is a real hero!!! 🙂 Many thanx!

PS: ...and is actually IS a 10.6.5 (or .6) issue...

I am currently trying tenortim's fix, but I'm having trouble with this step:

3) As root, cd to /System/Library/Extensions, rename IO80211Family.kext to IO8021Family.10 66 (or anything else to back it up), and copy in the replacement IO80211Family.kext that we extracted from 10.6.4.

After logging in as root, I renamed IO80211Family.kext and copied the replacement IO80211Family.kext that was extracted from 10.6.4. Then two errors came up, either with the renamed IO80211Family.kext or the replacement IO80211Family.kext. I tried Kext Utility, rebooted, and firmware version was still Atheros 5424: 2.1.14.5.


After this, I restored my Extensions folder from a backup drive and tried the whole process again. This time after rebooting, my firmware version went from Atheros 5424: 2.1.14.5 to Atheros 5424: 2.1.9.8.1. Wifi still does not work. Any suggestions on how to fix this...or what I should do now?

--
ETA: "cd to /System/Library/Extensions" -- could someone explain/how to do this? I think this is the part I missed.

In the Terminal, type the following, each followed by the return key (or copy and paste from here):

*cd /System/Library/Extensions*

then to rename the file:

*mv IO80211Family.kext IO8021Family.10 66*

Can't help you with copying the replacement file as no path is mentioned. Good luck!

You are GOD tenortim

You're solution worked for me. Got the old working Firmware from 10.6.4 back 🙂

Airport works now.

Thank you very much.

tenortim, I can not thank you enough. I have been fighting this ever since the 10.6.5 update hit. The "Genius Bar" told me I was crazy and that there is no way that the update would affect the wireless signal. They wanted to replace my wireless card and my motherboard. There is no telling how many people just do what they say because they are the Genius. I just couldnt convince myself that it was a hardware issue when it worked find on 10.6.4

Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x168C, 0x87)
Firmware Version: Atheros 5416: 2.0.19.10

Signal / Noise: -48 dBm / -96 dBm

Before rolling the driver back, the signal stayed at around 93.

Thanks again, I truly appreciate you posting that.

Yes, I think tenortim has hit upon at least the major part of the problem.

I have done the driver rollback and did experience a brief connection on my third floor. However, it did not last very long. After observing the behavior for a while, here are my conclusions:

In my downstairs location just 10' from the router, I can open the connection with real good stats:

-49 signal transmit rate of 54

Then after either checking email or surfing a page or two it goes down to:

-78-85
transmit of 1-5

Upstairs on the third floor, another 25' and two floors away, I start out with:

-70 signal
transmit rate 48

then jumps to:

-94, transmit 1-2

Then it can drop easily from there. The older driver does work better, but I used to be able to surf up on the third floor no problem. I am still seeing the behavior of having many local networks show up in the list during the initial good signal strength and then when it dies down, I can only see one or two wireless points around me.

I've tried some of the old techniques and pram reset etc. with no luck. At least my laptop is usable but not back the way it was.... 😟

-ashley

With all of those local networks around, could you be experiencing interference from another network?

Can you try changing your channels around to see if it improves?

Just for testing purposes, if your router is capable, try changing it over to 802.11A and see if it makes any difference. Just a thought.

ctl108806

seems like you've not so familiar with the terminal, I hope you've not by logging in as root made the files with wrong read write attibutes.

when viewing the file in terminal with command ls -la /System/Library/Extensions you should see a line saying something like this:
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Aug 2 2009 IO80211Family.kext

make sure the beginning is correct "drwxr-xr-x",
if this is not the case, run command: sudo chmod -R 755 /System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext

This command would give execute permissions to some non executable files. But that's not so much of a big deal.

Thank you for your help, Sam_P and JuanSkom.

The firmware version was Atheros 5424: 2.1.9.8.1 when I first turned my MacBook on today. Entering ls -la /System/Library/Extensions in Terminal gave me this:

drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Apr 23 2010 IO80211Family.kext
but also:
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 root wheel 102 Apr 23 2010 IO80211Family.10 66


I tried restoring my Extensions folder back to its 10.6.6 version via my external drive and rebooted in order to try tenortim's process again.

However, after rebooting, System Profiler now says:
Firmware Version: Atheros 5424: 2.0.19.10

I'm not sure what happened to get the firmware back to Atheros 5424: 2.0.19.10, but wifi is working again. I also notice that the IO80211Family.kext currently in my Extensions folder is actually a different version from the one on my external drive. My concern now is if I have the original 10.6.6 IO80211Family.kext backed up on my computer (as IO8021Family.10 66) and how I would find that out.

Hi there,
I have a white MacBook from 2007 with a broadcom chip. Its basically unusable in my wireless network since upgrading to 10.6.5 (10.6.6 did not fix it). The problems are speed issues, or no connection to the network at all - but snow leopard says that I am still connected ... The problems started with 10.6.5 . I yesterday tried to use the old IO80211Family.kext from 10.6.4 as suggested. It works better in a way that the webpages get loaded much quicker than with the one from 10.6.5/6. But still the connection gets lost, especially If I start a big download for instance, or have heavy load in the network. So is there any official statement from apple? When will they fix it, its a scandal! Is it related to the drivers or has it to do with dhcp-client, why is there nearly no information about it?
Any suggestions what I can do (without a complete downgrade to 10.6.4)?

Thorsten

Well in that case if you haven't tried the other "fixes" in this thread do so. In my case they fixed it. Sitting on 10.6.6 system on a 2006 Mac Pro.

Also flushing your cache files may improve general response of the system but also old settings might ghost in them. Not sure of that though, but after my update to 10.6.6 flushing cache did wonders to the crappy response I had as result of the update.

I tried all the "fixes" and did also tried with a fresh install. After I did the combo update to 10.6.6, the problems appear again ... Extremely frustrating!

Hi ctl108806,
if your firmware version is 2.0.19.10, then you are successfully running on the older (10.6.4) driver. The firmware is apparently integrated in the driver, not a separate file. You can always extract the 10.6.6 driver from the 10.6.6 combo update in exactly the same way that you did for 10.6.4. I always create a backup out of paranoia and for ease of backing out. If I had been unable to make the older driver work, it would have been much quicker to rename again and move back to the current driver.

In summary, you should be good until the next update. Hopefully when 10.6.7 rolls around Apple will address the issue (pretty please).