Q: new macbook pro 2011 weak and dropping wireless connection

Just give Apple a call. It might take 30 minutes of your time but they will help you sort it out. This forum is a very good resource, but if you are a new user it might be much more efficient for you to just call apple care. You've got free phone support for three months.

Good luck

Noah

The house is old but the walls are not too thick. I'm a tenant here and I'm not sure about the material used or what is inside them.

As for the router, it is a o2 wireless box IV made buy Thomson. I searched online and it looks exactly like this one

http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?q=thomson+router&hl=en&client=safari&rl s=en&prmd=imvns&resnum=3&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&biw=1173&bih=680&um=1&ie= UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=17286553879940288650&sa=X&ei=C8iYTryuBJSy8QO4t6HEBQ&ved=0CGEQ 8gIwAA

So it should be 802.11b/g/n, but to be honest I don't know what that means. However, if it were due to router or walls would that not affect my old laptop as well? or could it be a mac issue only?

Thanks again

nishba

It's been quiet here. Did 10.7.2 solve everybodies problems or what? If not, it would be interesting to hear if the wireless issues are still there with the spec-bumped MBP's announced today.

wireless still crap. i can't believe this issue hasn't yet been resolved by apple. the machines should be recalled like they do with cars so they can sort these crappy issues out.  you pay well over a thousand pounds for a computer and expect it to work...bit like the iphone. looks beautiful but ocassionally i'd like to make calls on it.

do i sound ****** off? lol

and i can't belived they asterisked out my expletive!!

I upgraded to lion yesterday and guess what still dropped connections if I connect at all. And i agree spend thousands on my mac and wheres the support. I'd trade this thing for a acer at the moment . Next time I buy anything for this price I'm going alienware. Apple lost my buisness...............

I had the same problems and thought that with a security package update the problem went away.  Well it did for a few days but came back.  I recently went to an apple store and told them about it and they exchanged the airport card inside my Macbook Pro early 2011.  Now I'm not droping any connections.  Really. If your mac is under the guarantee then simply have them replace the airport card.  Looks like its faulty. Although I've never purchased Apple Care in the past, this time I am going to.  This Mac is really a lot more sensetive than all my past Macs. Best wishes.

I finally went to the Apple store after not being able to connect to the wi-fi in a cafetteria. They found that the ping was jumping from about 8ms to 200ms every few seconds so they just gave me a new mac. I went to the same cafetteria and the wi-fi worked properly. Went home and everything was ok until my mac went to sleep, then the problems started again. I tryed the connection in a bunch of different networks (carrying my mac everywhere I new there was a free wi-fi!) and it worked well everywhere. So, I decided to change the wi-fi channel in my router, which improved the situation only slightly. Then I changed channel again and I unticked the "power saving" option (I'm using the o2 wireless box IV). For the past 3 days my wi-fi has been working perfectly anywhere in my house. I don't know if this is due to the new channel or to not having the power saving option turned on. I hope this is a definitive solution!

Hope this helps

nishba

nishba wrote:

 

I don't know if this is due to the new channel or to not having the power saving option turned on. I hope this is a definitive solution!

Both are responsible.

Power save on the router means a decrease of radio power when idle and that may lead the station (Mac) to disassociate from the network.

On the channel settings you should keep (if possible) a 5 channel gap to the strongest wireless in the neighborhood.

Lupunus

I had this problem immediatly after upgrading to Lion.  WiFi was dropping every 10 - 15 minutes.  The symptoms were that the wireless part of the ROUTER stopped functioning.  All other wireless devices were unable to connect to the internet once he problem occurred on my mid 2007 iMac 24".   I was able to confirm that if I turned the iMac off for several hours, the WiFi stayed up (as it had before Lion) and when I turned it back on, WiFi woudl fail within 30 minutes if not sooner.  I combed through a lot of posts on this and other threads. 

Out of desperation, I took the following systematic approach described in this thread:

http://osxdaily.com/2009/12/22/mac-wireless-problems-guide-to-troubleshooting-ai rport-wireless-problems-on-your-mac/

I made a few simultaneous changes to my wireless configuration as a result of following this troubleshooting guide:

1.  I upgraded my microcode on My Linksys WRT54G V6 router - it was a few releases old (2009).

2.  I changed my encryption algorithm from WPA to WPA2 Personal.

3.  I changed the router SSID to avoid confusion of the device wireless configs (had to reconfigure all my devices anyway).

4.  I deleted and added a new location in network preferences on Lion.

Once I completed this work, the problem went away.  I have not had the problem for 2 full weeks. 

I won't pretend to understand what the root cause of the issue was, but the fact that several people have found success in making changes to Encryption settings to WPA2 and upgrading router microcode leads me to believe there is something different in the way Lion manages encryption.  I did not find success in simply reconfiguring the Airport client (as others have) or in changing the wireless channel.  I could see that I was not experiencing signal issues.  It simply stopped communicating with the router, althought it appeared to still be connected to wireless on all the devices.  The router was routing wired traffic just fine during the issues. 

I normally don't post to these boards, but this was a vexing problem and I hope my experience will help some others working through this. 

So far, I'm not that impressed with Lion anyway.  If you have not upgraded yet, I would suggest you wait.  I also had to upgrade my memory from 2GB to 4GB to improve performance when multiple accounts are logged into the machine.  Paging went through the roof after the upgrade.  That is to be expected, and I don't mind paying $50 for the memory, but you should be aware of this going in.  I'm not really enamored with the new functionality in Lion after a few weeks.  I think it could use a bit more time in the proverbial oven. 

After going mad for months now with similar problems to eveyone else, since a 10.6.5 update on my MBP 5,3 I've hopefully found my solution.

I just tried the below suggestion, restarted, and amazingly Wifi connected automatically, straight away, no connection time outs, no incorrect password errors, no manually re-entering my password and clicking connect 20-30 times to connect!

I found a post here http://michaelhyatt.com/fix-for-wireless-connection-problems-on-macbook-pro.html, that used one of the suggested fixes from http://www.macmaps.com/WIFI1048.html.

Suggestion from the site as follows:

Recently it has been found changing your Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Network -> Show menu's (under the Location menu) -> Network Port configurationto have Airport as the first network type, clicking on Apply Now, and then restarting and zapping the PRAM solves the issue for some.

I am still on Snow Leopard, on my Mac Pro 15, which is the latest iteration (spring, 2011).   My problems started a month or so ago. Same as everyone here. My question is:  Since I can always immediately get the connection back by shutting off/turning on Airport, shouldn't that point to what the problem is? And doesn't it prove that it is the Mac and not the router (because a certified Mac service fellow told me it was probably not the Mac)?

JWD88 wrote:

 

I am still on Snow Leopard, on my Mac Pro 15, which is the latest iteration (spring, 2011).   My problems started a month or so ago. Same as everyone here. My question is:  Since I can always immediately get the connection back by shutting off/turning on Airport, shouldn't that point to what the problem is?

That looks like your Mac disassociates from the router (base). Because you gave no information about setup and router I can only make a guess about the possible reasons.

As the system run well before a interference with a neighbor wireless may be the reason if you are on 2.4GHz wireless.

Copy or type the following (without line break) to Terminal (Applications -> Utility's -> Terminal) and post the output here. Also tell us brand and model of the router.

sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Resources/airport -s

and

sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Resources/airport -I

Lupunus

Thanks, Lupunus. Here is what I got:

f                            SSID BSSID             RSSI CHANNEL HT CC SECURITY (auth/unicast/group)

                        bellotti 08:86:3b:3f:61:88 -82  36,+1   Y  -- WPA(PSK/AES/AES) WPA2(PSK/AES/AES)

             Google Net Backup 2 00:1e:2a:6f:76:da -83  9       N  US WEP

                         Tanacea b0:e7:54:79:91:69 -64  9       N  US WPA(PSK/TKIP/TKIP)

John-Diehls-MacBook-Pro:~ jwdiehl49$

-------

sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Resources/airport -I

     agrCtlRSSI: -64

     agrExtRSSI: 0

    agrCtlNoise: -85

    agrExtNoise: 0

          state: running

        op mode: station

     lastTxRate: 36

        maxRate: 54

lastAssocStatus: 0

    802.11 auth: open

      link auth: wpa-psk

          BSSID: b0:e7:54:79:91:69

           SSID: Tanacea

            MCS: -1

        channel: 9

John-Diehls-MacBook-Pro:~ jwdiehl49$

Oh, forgot gateway info:

It is a 2Wire 2701HGV-B.  AT&T DSL.

AT&T has been useless. They have fooled with gateway remotely a few times. Finally said to get a new one--which they won't pay for. And all they have is the same one. I was thinking about getting the Motorola modem (AT&T supported) and a separate router. Good idea?

Thanks.