iMac 12,2 (mid 2011) airport (wireless) problem

Can you output the results of holding down the alt/option key while clicking on the Wifi icon on the top when conected to N.

Here are both G and N on the imac

PHY Mode: 802.11g

BSSID: 30:46:9a:10:6b:82

Channel 11 (2.4 GHz)

Security: WPA2 Personal

RSSI: -54

Transmit Rate: 54

MCS Index: 0

PHY Mode: 802.11n

BSSID: 30:46:9a:10:6b:84

Channel 153 (5 GHz)

Security: WPA2 Personal

RSSI: -60

Transmit Rate: 162

MCS Index: 12

I have an iMac 20-inch early 2008 with a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. Ever since I have owned this computer I have had problems with the wifi dropping out and the only way I can get it to reconnect is to restart the computer. Sometimes it will go for an hour or two and then disconnect from the router, other times it will do it within 2 minutes of switching it on. I can turn the wifi off but then if I try to turn it back on it doesn't respond.

Of course it would have been better if I had made a warranty claim in the first year but I didn't - I suppose because I assumed that it was a problem with my router or I hoped that a new release of OSX or driver upgrade would fix the problem. Apart from this I love my iMac and have an Apple TV, iPhone4 etc so am a convert to Apple stuff.

Since installing OSX Lion 10.7 last week it seems to have gotten worse. I have been trawling the forums and iMac driver updates from time to time over the last few years to see if Apple had offerred a solution - but they have not. My conclusion is that there is either a hardware issue with the internal wifi chip or some other physical design flaw with the imac which interferes with the radio signal, a wifi chip firmware issue or a driver issue and that the cost to Apple of admitting the problem and having to fix it for free on thousands of iMacs means that they have adopted the policy of not fixing it and leaving thousands of users hanging out to dry.

I have changed ISP at least 4 times in the past four years (I live in London so there is plenty of choice) and got a new (different brand) of wireless router each time - so I don't think it is a router issue. I have an iPhone4 and iPad1 which never drops the wifi signal and an IBM laptop which never drops out. It is only the iMac.

I have been through most of the fixes suggested - changing the channel to 11 or a lower number, removing and adding a new WiFi interface, turning off the IPv6 (or whatever its called), changing from WPA to WEP etc etc - all with no success. Since it has gotten worse this week I am now going to buy a mac-compatible wifi dongle and see if this helps.

I guess I will eventually just buy a new iMac and hope the Wifi works properly on the new one, but I live in hope that Apple will do the right thing and recall the product including the ones out of warranty (paying such a high price for a product means that under consumer protection law it should work for longer that the statutory warranty period of one year - but who is bother with the expense of going to go to court over that: maybe we should start a class action!).

(I just tried to post this reply and what do you know - my internet has dropped out so the webpage is not responding. I will have to restart my computer and log back in to this forum and post the reply. I saved the text in textedit as I have learned to take precautions after dealing with this issue for over 3 years!)

Just to let you know, I've begun experiencing this issue too on my brand new 2011 iMac 27". This is the second mac they've sent me (first one arrived with a broken video card) so suffice to say I'm not particularly happy with my apple experience so far.

I find that the network disconnects and then seems to keep trying to reconnect - the list of networks keeps flicking between none, a few, and absolutely loads. The only solution is to restart airport and wait.

Here's hoping there's a fix, else this mac is going back to the shop and i'll go back to being a PC user (noooooo!).

I have signed up specifically so I can reply to this. I have a brand new iMac - dropping internet same as everyone else, no problem with macbook or anything else on same wireless network. (It's NOT the network or your settings)

Just this morning internet was dropping literally every 2 seconds. I had to turn airport off then on to get 2 seconds of connection before it dropped again.

Then I turned off my new bluetooth magic mouse. Replaced with old USB mouse.

I have had no problem since - not one drop since the switch.

This makes no sense to me but I'm so glad it worked. This answer isn't going to help anyone with a laptop but may help some desperate soul who happens to have an old USB mouse. The bluetooth keyboard does not seem to be an issue.

Apple you should be aware of and taking care of this problem - and you should be doing this right now.

Unfortunately, people (such as myself) are not even using a wireless mouse - so not only is the problem not your network or your settings, it is also not your mouse (which is Bluetooth not wireless anyway). Given this problem is intermittent, I expect the problems to reocurr for you shortly. Nor is it a hardware problem given that Windows 7 works fine with Wi-Fi on these Macs. Apple's use of "plausable deniability" on this issue is getting beyond a joke. Apple make computers which can't burn DVD's or connect to the internet reliably - awesome !!

You are definately onto something here! My problems seemed to disappear overnight without any idea of how they stopped, however I did change from a magic mouse to a third party logitech mouse (beacuse the magic mouse was a bit rubbish with cad).

So yes, this could be a magic mouse and wifi issue. Do they both piggy back on the same receiver?

Definitely worth looking into, I'm using a logitech wireless mouse and I no longer have any problems.

Bravo Nicole, the best suggestion yet.

Agreed. The mouse suggestions along with changing the channel on the router as solutions sounds like an interference problem. Just to be specific then about my fix, I switched to channel 6 on my router and everything wifi runs smooth, the mouse and keyboard work fine on my new 27" iMac. Curious if there is a conflict between Bluetooth and certain wifi channels; the result of changing channels was remarkable. Good suggestions everyone!

Just to follow up, I turned off the N part of the Airport and my iMac's wifi connection has been stable ever since. Hope that can help someone.

The bluetooth situation is interesting - I've been using the apple wireless keyboard and magic trackpad, and haven't had any problems. When I did have problems I think I was using a Belkin bluetooth mouse as well - maybe there's a particuarly bluetooth channel that's causing interference?

I'll conduct some experiments later and let you know my results...

Back in early May I had posted that I was having issues with a combination of Bluetooth and Wifi, the issue I was seeing was when the iMac was connected to my Airport Extreme the Wifi connections would all of a sudden timeout, disconnecting and re-connecting to the Airport Extreme wouldnt fix the issue. I could however connect to my Netgear modem/router directly and that would work ok.

The interesting part was that I was getting some kind of Bluetooth interferance as well, without touching anything the volume control would increase and I would frequently get scroll down events meaning applications like Safari would automatically scroll tot he bottom of the page without any mouse ro keyboard input from myself.

I therefore wonder if it is some kind of interference between the Wifi and Bluetooth, when it works in Windows and not OSX are they both set up to use the same Wifi channel?

I am not convinced about the bluetooth theory - I have turned off my bluetooth altogether and my wifi still regularly disconnects and requires a reboot before it will reconnect.

I have bought this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000Y164N2/

which will arrive in the next few days and I plan to disable the built in wifi (if possible?) and use this instead. I will let you know if it makes any difference.

On this thread https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3054439?start=15&tstart=0 the user Npalamidis suggests 'putting the router in channel 36 (5GHZ band)' - I don't even know if my router has this channel but I will try it. Another user says 'you can try and go to your system preferences. Choose energy saver. and Uncheck "wake for network access" that way when your computer sleeps it does not lose its network connection' - I think I may have tried this before but will try it again.

I had Windows XPSP3 installed a while ago (but no longer) and I remember playing around with the powersave/wake from idle setting in the wifi driver. I honestly can't remember if this made any difference but I would think it is worth testing for anyone who uses windows on bootcamp as it would be good to look more into the possibility that the powersave/fail to wake from sleep after idle is causing this. However, my wifi disconnects sometime within minutes of booting so on that basis it would seem that this theory is off the mark!

Hi,

We have the exact same problem. The WiFi keeps disconnecting and it's extremly annoying.

We didn't pay premium for a non-functional iMac 😟

Disconnecting the bluetooth mouse helped a bit but the problem is still there. Every other mac on the network works just fine.

Will call support tonight and if they can't solve it this time we will have to return it as DoA.

Excellent.

Please make sure they also pass the problem "up the line". I have already sent feedback to Apple on 2 occassions, but this problem has existed since these models were released and Apple STILL hasn't even acknowledged there is any problem (despite the same problem having afflicted their 2010 iMacs as well - which they did eventually fix with a firmware update), which is becoming incredibly frustrating !!!

When i first purchased this 27" iMac back in early June iw as experiencing this issue quite regularly, 1-2 times a day. Then the problem dissapeared for about 2 months.

Now, a week or 2 after installing Lion the problem is back, im dropping the connection 3-4 times a day. I am connected to an Apple Airport Extreme 802.11n 2nd Generation