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new macbook pro 2011 weak and dropping wireless connection

Just looked throught this part of the forum and found out there are a lot of people out there which seem to have the same problem as me.

I purchased a new modell 2011 MBP on the very first day from our apple store.
At home, sitting directly beside the wireless router I didn´t noticed anything wrong.
I have got beside of the Mac OS a bootcamp Prt. with Windows 7 on it and everythign works fine so far.

Five days after purchased I started traveling on business and at present we are for some weeks in Melbourne. Were having a wireless connection in our appartement and here I have got massiv problems with my connection.

We are having altogether four windows mashines with us, my IPad, my Iphone, another HTC smartphone, and my new Macbook.

All the other devices connecting to our room wireless without problems. The net strengh is not fantastic but the other devices bringing it up to four bars on the windows wireless symbol in the task bar. None of the other computers where ever loosing the connection.

Only my macbook can not make it over three bars and its going on and off. Donwloads fail freuquently because the conection is interrupted more than one times..
In my opinion this problem is even worse on the Windows OS and a bit better but far away from beeing good and acpetable on the Mac Os.
I hope its only a driver issue and there is no hardware problem with the new mashine. Other than this I love the new notebook and I am very satisfied with its performance.

Iphone 4, Ipad 1 ,Macbook pro 13, I 5, 8GB, early 2011, Windows 7, Mac OS

Posted on Mar 8, 2011 9:00 PM

Reply
968 replies

Jul 11, 2011 11:29 PM in response to LaraJones

Hi there!

Maybe I've got the solution guys!

I don't know if all of u already have tried to do this, for me it seems to work, no so good, but I think my MacBook Pro works a little bit better after that.

All u have to do is, go to the /Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/ folder and remove the file called "com.apple.alf.plist." Then reboot the system and log in again.

I hope I could help.

Let me know if it work.

Good luck for us. 😉

Jul 15, 2011 10:28 AM in response to RegisTN

Hello,


I wanted to update this as I got my computer swapped out completely and the problem is still happeing. This seems to NOT be a hardware issue unless it is a very common hardware issue. The two apple genuises did not have any knowledge of a common issue like this. Honestly neitehr one of them understood what I was talking about when I explained dropped packets and showed them the ping output.


Also wanted to comment on removing the "com.apple.alf.plist" will disable your firewall settings. I am unsure why this would fix things and if it does it should not be a perminate fix, removing security to gain ability to transmitt data is not a valid option. My firewall settings are set to off and I got the new computer and the settings should be clean on a new machine and I am still having this issue.


-chrisl

Jul 15, 2011 10:38 AM in response to Bob Caruthers

This issue is not just in browsing with Safari, Firefox or Chrome. Example I was updating all my podcasts last night with iTunes and I have some large video podcasts. While doing this I was watching the network and getting lots of dropped packets and even some of the downloads to iTunes failed and had to be started again. Ended up moving to wired connection to download the largest one because it was so slow and kept failing.

Jul 15, 2011 1:03 PM in response to LaraJones

Hiya, have already posted this a while ago but in case it helps anyone else...


Had no end of trouble with new macbook pro losing connection with virgin media wireless router (netgear). In the end changed settings on router to WEP (instead of WPA) and also changed channel used to 3 (was set to 10 before). Have now been trouble free for around 2 months. Apparently WEP is less secure but am willing to take the risk in the name of stability!


Hope that helps somebody! 🙂

Jul 18, 2011 2:28 PM in response to LaraJones

I just want to chime in …


When I purchased a 2010 i5 MBP last year, my wife would laugh at me losing wifi all the time. Back then I thought, our two machines (hers an elderly C2D MBP at that time) basically don't want to be too close together when using our wlan. My problem seemed to be the bigger the closer the two MBPs were.


Now, me still on the i5 and her on a 2011 i7 MBP, we both experience the same wifi drops all the time.


I can't determine, why one day I'm the one who gets bitten most and on the other it's her. I just can say: it's a REAL PAIN IN THE <cut it>


We were on a AVM Fritzbox 7270 last year and this year are on a 7390. Made no difference, after all.


Is there anything to be found in the system logs?



Jason

Jul 20, 2011 11:30 AM in response to LaraJones

Hi all,


Since this thread is specifically about the mcbp 2011 and wifi reception, it would be wonderful if we could see some postings and observations about the performance of this machine with Lion. My machine is working okay on some connections but still dropping connections. If LION really is better, I'll probably upgrade right away. Some feedback from all of you would be helpful.


I'm pretty hesitant since I'm a creative pro working on tight deadlines. However, enhanced wifi would greatly enhance my overall workflow.


Cheers,

Noah

Jul 20, 2011 11:37 AM in response to ro3er

i think no one can give helpful feedback about airport on lion yet.

i use lion for about 6 hours now and didn't have a wifi drop so far.

but as i didnt have wifi drops every day this is not really helpful for anyone..

i will post again if any wifi problems occure or in one or two weeks if it is stable.

so far it looks good for me

Jul 21, 2011 5:09 PM in response to yozhbk

yozhbk wrote:


Seeing same behavior as before with transfers, pings drop when doing a large transfer over N network. I do think this is due a hardware defect or perhaps a firmware issue not something to do on a higher level, such as drivers and stuff. But looks a bit better will test more later.

I thought I read somewhere that these problems didn't exist when running Windows under Boot Camp. If that's the case, then the problem is almost certainly a software/driver issue. If it were a hardware/firmware issue, we'd be seeing the issue under Bootcamp also.

Jul 22, 2011 7:47 AM in response to yozhbk

yozhbk wrote:


... I do think this is due a hardware defect or perhaps a firmware issue not something to do on a higher level, such as drivers and stuff...

It's not hardware.

I started having the problems when I upgraded to SL.

My 2008 MBP was functioning fine and when I boot into 10.5.8 with my cloned Back-Up it still works fine.


I routinely have to re-boot page requests by highlighting the URL and sending again… PITA.

But with complex transactions like online bill paying etc it's a crap shoot.

Lame.

new macbook pro 2011 weak and dropping wireless connection

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