10.6.5 and wifi issues

Is there anything around this update, that makes you believe that this problem will be fixed in 10.6.7?
I mean: since 10.6.6 didn't fix it I gave up hope that Apple will address this sometime
(well, beside that "buy-yourself-a-new-mac"-solution...)

If the current Macs use the same wifi boards they'll have the same issues, I fear.

But one never knows ... I just read on iFixit that the screws holding the battery were changed without an organised Apple Event 😉

Hello

This is my first post but I hope you can help as I am going out of my mind!

Im trying to rename the .kext file through terminal but when I enter the command it says 'permission denied'. I read somewhere that 'sudo mkdir' would work but it hasn't.

I basically have no idea what I am doing in terminal and was hoping someone could give me a help!

Thanks.

Ignore the above - spent some time reading up and my first foray into moving and renaming files with Terminal has been a success!

My Mac Mini 2.0Ghz Mid 2007 is back using the older working Firmware Version now - Firmware Version: Atheros 5424: 2.0.19.10

Connection nows seem very stable, not being thrown off all the time. Signal strength is showing as 1bar though, even when sitting only 3m from my Time Capsule in the same room - I think I'll need to look into this further, unless anyone has any other suggestions?

Thanks and well done to all the people who figured this out!

Me again....

Just to keep you all updated, I have checked out the wireless card and found that the ZIF cable at the back of the Mac Mini was loose. Iv'e re-seated the connection and its now working a treat with the old firmware.

Thanks again!

oh please, I hope they fix this one!
I have a linksys am200 -ethernet into mac pro-then airport to macbook pro.Worked solidly in 10.6.4.
MP should be 802.11n but macbook pro now sees it as 802.11g .Transmit rate is normally 130 from the Mac Pro but as soon as Laptop is hooked up it drops to 54.This has only been a problem since updating
to 10.6.5.Also every time I shut down macpro it forgets that airport was sharing.And I then have to delete airport from the network reboot ,then recreate it to get it working again but at half the strength.
which makes streaming video and large files unusable.I did speak to apple tech but the guy said cant tell me anything until I upgrade to 10.6.6
T

I have a problem related to wifi, I started a thread but this seems like a better place to get some advice.

My iMac's wifi appears to have conked out, it can't see any networks despite their being several in the area - one of which I'm connected to right now on my laptop. Airport (and the connection manager on Boot Camp) all seem to think the wifi is working, and just can't find any connections. Right now I'm using disk utility to verify permissions, but it's more of a last resort. Is there anything I ought to try?

tenortim's solution seems to have worked for me! Thank you!

I am now really, really angry about Apple, though. I spent hours of my life trying to find the solution on these and other forums. I tried everything. *I bought a new router* solely because of this issue! I thought that surely this was my router's problem since Apple wouldn't ignore such an issue in its OS update. I was ready to reinstall the whole OS.

If you're working for Apple and you're reading this, please please make it your mission to get this fixed in the next update. I know how hard it is to get something fixed in a large corporation, but this is ridiculous.

Thanks again to tenortim for the fix (it's on page #23).

I have the same issue with my Mac Mini (Macmini3,1). Since one of the previous updates, I get the ISP failed issue every day. I have tried all solutions suggested in this discussion and other discussions. No success here.
I have now put the Network Diagnostics icon on my desktop and click it and continue the re-connection process every time I loose connection. Every time it ISP and others have have the yellow dot while Airport has the green dot when I start the Network Diagnostics. Every time, on continuing with the Network Diagnostics wizard, it continues and automatically re-establishes connection.

Based on my debugging, I think the internet connection is timing out after a period of inactivity. I suspect one of the network drivers/airport express classes is being released from memory after a timeout and instead of being loaded back to memory on opening a new connection (browser or Eclipse or Xcode), it either does not get loaded or times-out and reports no-connection resulting in "ISP failed" error.

I really hope Apple responds with a fix to this issue.

tenortim, your the man!

I had previously upgraded my macbook from 10.6.4 to 10.6.5 and wireless (atheros airport) broke. Signal was very intermittent and unusable. So I downgraded to 10.6.4 again and left it like that.

So when apple released 10.6.6, i thought surely Apple have fixed this problem by now.....

No. upgrading from 10.6.4 to 10.6.6 had broken the wireless again. I began to think it was an application such as Parallels or VMWare that was causing the wireless to misfunction after the update. So I decided to start with a clean slate and install a virgin copy of 10.6.3. Everything worked fine. So I installed the combo update for 10.6.6...

Wireless broke again. So I know now that it was Apples/ Atheros fault. After searching for a fix, I found your post tenortim, followed your instructions, and it worked perfectly!

I still cant get over the following:

ℹ How atheros came up with a driver upgrade that didnt work and gave it to apple
(ii) How apple must not have tested it properly (and its not as if they have that much variations of mac hardware to have to test it with) and yet still bundled it in with the update.
(iii) How Apple, even after all the reports of problems with the driver, still did not provide a fix in the later 10.6.6 update?

It nearly feels like im back to using a PC again.....

Its even worse than sitting in front of a pc! With my pc I never had such problems!
Bye the way I am using a white Macbook with a broadcom chip. Up to 10.6.4 I have nearly (sometimes even with this version I have the problem) no problems. Upgrading to 10.6.5 and/or 10.6.6 makes my wifi unusable! When I replace the kext-file with the older one from 10.6.4 the situation gets a bit better but still lots of connection problems every day! So I think it can at least not only be related to the driver or firmware, otherwise a complete 10.6.4 would not be much better than a 10.6.5/6 with the kext from 10.6.4 ...
Apple should solve this, this politics of just ignoring these things is unbelievable. A laptop without working wifi is not a laptop in our days. I spend hours and hours for trying and trying and trying ... I really feel fooled by this company! And all these advises of updating routers or saying that the router is the problem instead of the os x, strongly reminds me onto steves suggestion of holding the iphone4 different if your affected by the signal problem caused by bad radio!
I am honestly not sure weather I will buy a mac or a windows computer next time!

You just illustrated the most likely reason why Apple didn't yet step forward and bring out a "patch" consisting of a downgrade of the AirPort driver kext to the one from 10.6.4 . More may be at play, and I think we can be certain that we'd have had the fix if there was an easy one. We'll see what happens with the 10.6.7 OS update.

You might be right, but honestly I have some problems to believe that this is really the case!
If they want to fix it they have the power to do it within a couple of hours/days, they have thousands of programmers. But instead of focusing onto really important stuff like stability they bring out new features, like the app-store 😀. Thats ridiculous. I think that only a few percent of the users are affected by this wifi-issue and apple knows this and simply ignores us or in other words did not put these issues on their highest priority, where they should be. And if you consider open source drivers like for linux, where people write everything from scratch and get a stable and reliable connection I simply can not believe that it is that hard to fix it!
Thats why I feel fooled!

We're talking about debugging a hardware driver that's probably way below a huge number of complex frameworks that build upon the provided functionality. And it's not pure software, but software driving electromagnetic processes (radio). I'm not an expert on the matter, but I won't start from the premises that it's all that easy. Besides, who write those drivers - Apple, or the chipset providers?!
(The fact that at least 2 different wifi chipsets are affected does suggest that the issue is related to something Apple ... or yet another parts provider :-/ )

I guess no one but Apple and maybe the big software houses were waiting for the App Store, but you'll agree its introduction was a big event planned long in advance. Do you really think they ought to have postponed that for those few percent of users being affected by a wifi issue?

Yes. I do. And I don't believe it's a small percentage either.

I have a brand new Macbook (bought end Nov 2010) that has had this problem since it updated to 10.6.5 after about a month of use. Several hours on the net, an expensive call to the Apple helpline didn't solve it. A visit to my Apple shop did for a while until the latest update came out and the whole thing has fallen over again.

I went back to the Apple shop today and they tell me that this is a very common problem, they have several people in every day with it and have the same issues with their own personal machines at home. But Apple will fix it very soon....

Their attempt to fix it today has failed, so I am now tethered by ethernet cable to my router with the laptop on top of the dog's cage in the hall with me perched on a stool.

I don't call that over £1,000 well spent Apple. Do you?