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

My 21.5" mid 2011 i mac would loose airport connection a couple of minutes after starting up or waking from sleep. Solution was to turn off airport then turn it back on which would then keep it connected. After reading the post on page one regarding priority connection list in network preferences I found that time machine was listed first, then airport, ethernet and firewire. Not having a time capsule(I use Super Duper) I deleted it. Two days and so far so good---keeping my fingers crossed.

Just to follow up from my July post. Switching off the "n" on my Airport back then and it has kept my iMac's WiFi stable all the way through today.

This morning, I updated the AirPort base station to 7.6 and then switch back on the "n" and I've been stable and with better speed all day. I think this solved it on my 2007 iMac running 10.6.8.

Has anyone else had luck with the new AirPort update?

This turned out to be an interference issue for me.    Apple wanted me to re-init the time capsule router (I refused, it's been flawless for over a year), and to test a wired connection (which of course worked, all 94GB file xfer test), and we also created a new "location" which worked wonders until we hung up with each other...  

Then the tech suggested the IP cameras I'm running around the house (which also have been running flawlessly for years) might be causing interference.    I didn't want to go this route being convinced it was a wifi hardware issue, but I humored the guy.    But instead of taking offline the IP cams, I simply tried using the 5 Ghz band on the TC instead of the 2.4 Ghz.    Bingo.    Not a single drop since, and I can xfer files from the TC to the imac(94GB) no problem.  I don't know for certain what may have been causing interference, but switching bands fixed it.

I did have to endure some hardship in adding an old linksys router to the homenet to handle the cameras and other non-5Ghz devices, but we're happy.

I've been troubleshooting this problem for quite some time... With no results until last week, maybe

Well, I was having WiFi drops on iMac getting awake from sleep mode. Sometimes without a drop, but then it would sometimes also drop without a sleep.

Not very frequent but enough to make me angry.

For the past few days (week) I had NO drops, which is strange as I did nothing that could fix this solution but ONE LITTLE THING. I cannot confirm that this fixed my WiFi issues, and maybe the problem will get back in a few next days, or even today.

To get back to a possible solution, which, to be honest, doesn't sounds lika a real solution to this issue but you can try...

My wife wanted me to disable that "download security check" for files that she downloaded from Internet, so I found a command line (Terminal) that does just that:

defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool NO

So, this was about a week ago, and since then I noticed (not immediately of course) that I had no WiFi drops.

What do you think about this?

Is anyone else willing to try this out?

Any updates on whether this really worked?

I can't see what relevance it would have to the wifi connection but I'm willing to give it a try if it is still working for you.

@Speedbird676, nope

but it was a nice try tough...

it was strange for me also, because it was the first time that I had no wifi drops for a whole week !

and I did no other configurations but that LSQuarantine...

but, I contacted my local Apple support and with some instructions from them I can say that I might be on a track to solve this issue.

what I did was:

- create new location (old default one "Automatic" deleted) and added my WiFi network to it

- after that I did a PRAM and SMC reset

for now, I can say that for the past few days I had NO wifi drops !

keeping my fingers crossed

before, I tried with PRAM reset but with no luck, and now I was isntructed to do also SMC reset...

I'll keep you all posted on this after some more time (with this hopefully working solution)

@Darko

I have also followed all of those instructions on a number of occassions. It seems to work temporarily (maybe a few days) but then the problem comes back.

I've also noticed if my iMac has been switched off for a few days (ie: when I go on holiday) that it is much better behaved for the first couple of days when I'm back.

Perhaps this explains why when people take their iMac into the Apple store that it all works perfectly, as it has been switched off to take it there.

@Speedbird676

unfortenutaly, same problem occurs again

only this time it happened about 15min after boot and while I was working, and in the meanwhile iMac did NOT go into Sleep mode.

I'm in contact with local support again, sent them system.log and kernel.log to see what next we could try to fix this.

as I understood while googling, people who had this fixed were in their local Apple support and they replaced logicboard in iMac...???

Running 27" imac running 10.6.8.

Same problem as everyone else, but.... while my browser connection drops and airport indicator says i'm connected, if I'm streaming audio the stream doesn't drop. And I've let it continue to make sure it wasn't just playing the buffer and was goin to stop. It kept going but my browser (safari or chrome) couldn't connect. Only way to reset is to turn airport on/off.

I'm having the same problem with Mid-2011 21" iMac. I just cannot believe there is so much people are having the same issue, with no satisfactory solution. Shame on Apple.

I may just have to bite the bullet and take it into my local Apple store.

It is probably different for everyone.  I couldn't figure out what was wrong in my situation, iMac 2011.  I took it to the store, I even had the wireless card switched out.  What fixed it eventually (6 months now no problems) was updating some settings manually within my router.  Everything else worked prior to the change except my imac (ipad2, ps3, mbpro) and worked after I changed my router settings as well.

Hi, could you let us know what router settings you changed?

Thanks

Mike

This has just happened 5 times in the last 10 minutes. I've started inserting markers in my logs every time it happens and have noticed the following combination of three entries always happens at the exact time it stops working.

07/01/2012 00:09:26.000 kernel: en1: 802.11d country code set to 'GB '.

07/01/2012 00:09:26.000 kernel: en1: Supported channels 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 36 40 44 48 52 56 60 64 100 104 108 112 116 120 124 128 132 136 140

07/01/2012 00:09:26.000 kernel: en1: BSSID changed to 00:24:17:80:51:f9

Does anybody have any ideas?

I think I'll keep adding markers to the logs for the next week and then book it in at the Apple store.

I got a question from my support - do I have VMware ?

Yes, I have VMware Fusion installed, running Win7 on it occasionally.

I have WiFi drops when I don't use Vmware, but haven't noticed iti when I run Win7 on it...

Does anyone else here use VMware ?

Hope we could isolate this whole issue to some VMware incompatibility problem with drivers/Lion...