Q: Lion WiFi Connection Problem

Just talk to support. Fixed in 5 mins.

Click on "Go" to right off Apple on top left

Click on "Computer"

Click on "Macintosh HD"

Click on "Library"

Click on "Preferences"

Click on "System Config"

Drag com.apple.airport.preferences.plist, networkinterfaces.plist & preferences.plist to Trash. It will ask for your admin password.

Once done, restart computer

My connectivity after falling to sleep situation was cured after restart. Hope it helps.

Thanks rizzo17 - and you didn't need to reconfigure anything? When you rebooted, the system recreated those files without any assistance from you?

Does anyone know whether this solution has emerged from Apple's acknowledgement of the problem as reported by BenHart67? And does anyone know whether it addresses ONLY failure to connect after sleep, or the intermittent failure of WiFi connectivity that may of us are experiencing?

I'll check with the people who are working with this and give an update later on...

Rizzo17,

I am thrilled that this worked for you.  I've been on and off this board since November a month after I upgraded to Lion.  Several people have mentioned this months ago and an Apple rep that I spoke with in December had me do this same thing.  It works great for some people so I totally recommend trying it.  But it didn't for me in December. A few days after trying the Apple solution I got a new router and that solved my problem for several months.  But for some reason it came back.  All that being said I'm going to try your suggestion again today just in case.

I've also found that a number of solutions that I've tried here work for a day or so and then the problems come back.  So I also recommend to anyone before posting here about something that you've found wait about a week to see if it sticks and then let us hear about it. 

I sincerely hope that your issue is solved.

emnsy,

I'm going to give you a very detailed answer to one of your questions because I don't want you to try this and go "oh, oh".  Deleting those kinds of preference files means that new replacements automically will appear after a reboot.  So no worries there. HOWEVER,  all of the information associated with them will be deleted.  So in this case it will be the password/s for your internet connection/s. They will have to be reentered. (In fact, don't panic after your reboot and you have no internet connection. The password has to go in before it can connect.)

If you have a desktop and only one way to connect to the internet that's not a big deal provided you know your password.  If you're not sure of it then before you delete the preferences you need to open Keychain Access.  Just type Keychain Access into Spotlight in the top right hand corner. ( You will need to know the password associated with your computer in order to see the passwords that are listed.) Select "Passwords" and you'll see a list.  Find the one associated with your internet connection.  Under "Kind" it will say something about network password.  Double click that one and you'll see at the bottom it says show password. Select it and Keychain Access will ask for your computer password before you can continue.  Put that in and your network password will appear.

But back to deleting preferences and your internet connections.  If you use a laptop and have put in numerous passwords, be sure you know what they are before you delete the preferences.  You can follow everything that I wrote above to make sure you have the correct ones.

If I remember correctly Rizzo17's solution was supposed to work for all of the internet connection issues (both wake from sleep and intermittent drops) but I'm not 100% sure about that.  Good luck and I hope that your problems are resolved.

This actually made my problem worse.  My wifi does not even last 5 minutes without dropping the connection.  I think i'm just gonna start using my bootcamp Windows 7, since the wifi works fine on that.  Someone from Apple please read this, the wifi works fine in Windows and does not in Lion, obviously it is a bug. Not a single computer using Lion has worked on my wifi, including an early 08 macbook, late 08 macbook, and my 09 mb pro. Every other device/OS works perfectly.  The only way for me to use my internet at home is by plugging in an ethernet cable.  I'm not going to go buy a new router, when the one I have is less than a year old.  Apple needs to fix this before I smash my computer.

Thanks, Javajoe; that's exactly the response I needed - and it is generally educational, which I appreciate. I shall in any event await confirmation that this fix will address  intermittent WiFi failure as well as failures following sleep: a re-boot every couple of days isn't such a monstrous inconvenience.

Eric491 wrote:

 

This actually made my problem worse.  My wifi does not even last 5 minutes without dropping the connection.  I think i'm just gonna start using my bootcamp Windows 7, since the wifi works fine on that.  Someone from Apple please read this, the wifi works fine in Windows and does not in Lion, obviously it is a bug. Not a single computer using Lion has worked on my wifi, including an early 08 macbook, late 08 macbook, and my 09 mb pro. Every other device/OS works perfectly.  The only way for me to use my internet at home is by plugging in an ethernet cable.  I'm not going to go buy a new router, when the one I have is less than a year old.  Apple needs to fix this before I smash my computer.

What make and model of router do you have?  Is it configured for automatic frequency selection?  Does it have the latest firmware in it?  Set it to a single frequency, try 1, 6 or 11 on 2.4ghz.  If you are using 801.11n on 2.4ghz, try forcing it to 802.11g to see if that fixes it.

I really do believe that there are problems reacting to "failed WiFi" which can happen if you are in a heavy WiFi zone, or when you close the lid and put the machine to sleep, etc.  802.11n has been problematic for any but the best manufactures.  Your other devices that are working well, may actually be using 802.11b/g and not 802.11n services on your router.

If you recall my message from a while ago: I had the exact problem (with two identical new iMacs + Lion) that wifi was failing every few minutes.  I then discovered it was trying to use the 802.11n (2.4Ghz) of my cheapo modem router.  All I changed was the router: I disabled mode n.  Thereafter my iMacs connected using mode g and all was well (rock-solid even).

Fast-forward to now, I have bought an Airport Extreme (because I got an apple TV and wanted the faster wireless network streaming) and I can confirm that 802.11n (**5GHz**) is also working flawlessly on the iMacs.  At no stage from the beginning have I reinstalled anything or cleared keychain stuff, or even do any network setup changes on the Macs, besides type in my wifi password for my network SSID.

Regarding hardware, it is unclear whether my problem was on the router or the Macs; however, regarding software, my problem was very clearly related to the 2.4GHz 802.11n wifi mode.  Is it possible that the snow leopard driver did not support the 2.4Ghz mode n, but the new Lion driver defaults to that and flaky routers with poor 2.4GHz mode n support are shown up? It would be interesting to hear from anyone that is successfully using the **2.4GHz** 802.11n mode in Lion (preferably with a router that doesn't support the 5GHz mode n), to confirm or reject the hypothesis...

I am not suggesting that everyones's problem is the same as mine, just that this may be true for *some*.

It's a dlink dir-655. I also have an airport express that I use as a wireless printer hub and airtunes, but it has no ethernet ports so I can't use it as the main router.  I'm using older firmware because with the latest one, I cannot connect to the airport express at all, and can't print, but that's a different story with dlink.  The firmware may very well be a solution for my wifi, but I can't use it.  I've tried every possible wireless setting, g only, n only, every kind of security, and nothing works.

gphonei : what is your email address?  i have the logs

Eric491 wrote:

 

I also have an airport express that I use as a wireless printer hub and airtunes, but it has no ethernet ports so I can't use it as the main router. 

this is very strange, I have an airport express as well and it does have an ethernet port. Infact I connected it to my huawey router to have simultaniously internet connection and air-play. I posted my problems long time ago with these wi-fi connections, none of the solutions posted worked for me (I didn't try to put back the snow-driver). The only test left was the 5GZ band, so I decided to buy a new airport express with 802.11N and setting it to work at 5gz. Now it's a week, it's working very well and the only problem I have is that to buy a book using my amazon-kindle I have to switch back to 2.4 and then back to 5. But so far it works, after sleeping, switching off, closing the lid... the only test left is connecting the router directly to my MBP, because before lion dropped the connection very often even with the cable, I'll do this in the future.

Even this new airport, of course, has the ethernet port and it is setup as before: internet through the ethernet cable and air play. What kind of airport express do you have?

I meant it has no extra Ethernet ports. It just has the one wan port. I use Ethernet for my Xboxes so I need a router with more ports, and I use the express as a printer hub. I originally used a wired router with the airport as a wireless gateway on bridge mode, and wifi worked fine but I wanted to move the printer to another room so I bought a dlink router. I should've returned it and gone with a Linksys.

I just figured out that there are some problems with IPv6 and apple products, it's possible that it's the source of some of these issues.  For me it's the reason I can't connect to my airport express. I need to be able to disable IPv6 in the airport express settings, and I can't figure out how.  To do it in Lion, go to terminal, then type

networksetup -setv6off wi-fi

Hopefully this will help some people.

Eric491 wrote:

 

I just figured out that there are some problems with IPv6 and apple products, it's possible that it's the source of some of these issues.

The only ones I know are server tools. Whatever was wrong with iTunes and Airport Utilities has been fixed. If you have specifics please let us know about them.

For me it's the reason I can't connect to my airport express. I need to be able to disable IPv6 in the airport express settings, and I can't figure out how.  To do it in Lion, go to terminal, then type

networksetup -setv6off wi-fi

Hopefully this will help some people.

Apple has posted this information for Snow Leopard users http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3802.