Level 1

10 points

Wifi won't turn on since upgrade to Lion

First of all, my apologies if i make alot of gramar/spell errors, english is not my native language.

Yesterday i've upgraded my Snow Leopard installation to Lion on my late 2008 macbook pro and from the beginning i am unable to start my Wifi/Airport card. The menu bar shows the wifi icon but with no signal bars. When i click the wifi icon and press 'Turn wifi on' nothing happens. System profiler shows the airport card and when i look in Console i can see that the system recognizes the wifi card and acknowledge it's mac address.

What i've tried so far:

- I've created another user account

- I performed a clean install on a second harddrive, same problem

- i rolled back to Snow Leopard and the airport card functions as it should be, this rules out a hardware failure

- I've deleted all files in /library/preferences/SystemConfiguration and rebooted

- I've created a new location with only the Airport card under System preferences - Network

- I've made the airport card inactive and active again

I did found some strange messages in Console but they are not very clear: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/718/screenshot20110721at102.png/

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Jul 21, 2011 3:07 PM

278 replies

Jul 22, 2011 7:45 AM in response to kevinrobers

Are you able to enable WiFi if you boot to Safe Mode (some systems will not be able to do this, but some should).

kevinrobers Author

Level 1

10 points

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

David, do you have a recent time machine backup? If so, rollback to Snow Leopard that is the only way to fix this for now. Attach your time machine drive to your mac, reboot it and hold CMD + R during startup. From that point you will see what you have to do next.

Would you please be so kind to post your firmware version under Snow Leopard and/or Lion? Thx!

Jul 22, 2011 7:57 AM in response to kevinrobers

Yeah i just backedup before installing lion...thanks!

I'll post the firmware once i get home tonite. Thanks guys!

kevinrobers Author

Level 1

10 points

Jul 22, 2011 8:13 AM in response to Topher Kessler

Just tried to boot in safe mode (by holding shift during boot, right?) same problem. Also tried verbose mode and it does show the airport card. Really think this is a firmware issue 🙂

Jul 22, 2011 8:19 AM in response to davidnowhere

hey guys. Weirdest thing. Just got home n wifi is now working fine at home. So no problems now....

crye55

Level 1

0 points

Jul 22, 2011 8:26 AM in response to davidnowhere

So you just tried to turn it on and it actually turned on? Did you do anything?

Still dead for me, on with Applecare now.

Jul 22, 2011 8:47 AM in response to kevinrobers

I got the exactly same problem, looks like the firmware needs upgrade!

Jul 22, 2011 9:45 AM in response to dongsheng

Hey guys, I fixed this issue by turning mac off/on again, note, I took the battery out to release electricity, it worked now!

kevinrobers Author

Level 1

10 points

Jul 22, 2011 10:14 AM in response to dongsheng

Already tried that with no succes but thx!

kevinrobers Author

Level 1

10 points

Jul 22, 2011 12:06 PM in response to kevinrobers

I'm currently trying to find out if this problem also exists on the developer previews of Lion. I've just tested DP4 (the last version before the Golden Master and final release) and it has the same issue. But. It has another firmware version.

Lion Golden Master / final:

Software versions:

CoreWLAN 2.0 (200.46)

CoreWLANKit 1.0 (100.43)

Menu Extra 7.0 (700.42)

Config plug-in 7.0 (700.57)

System profiler 7.0 (700.3)

IO80211 Family 4.0 (400.40)

WiFi Diagnostics 1.0 (100.26)

Airport Utility 5.5.3 (553.20)

Interfaces

Card Type: Airport Extreme (0x14E4, 0x8D)

Firmware version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.100.98.75.6)

Lion Developers Preview 4

Software versions:

CoreWLAN 2.0 (200.44)

CoreWLANKit 1.0 (100.42)

Menu Extra 7.0 (700.41)

Config plug-in 7.0 (700.51)

System profiler 7.0 (700.3)

IO80211 Family 4.0 (400.35)

WiFi Diagnostics 1.0 (100.26)

Airport Utility 5.5.3 (553.20)

Interfaces

Card Type: Airport Extreme (0x14E4, 0x8D)

Firmware version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.100.98.69.6)

I'm currently looking for older developer previews.. but.. well... they are not really easy to find for the obvious reasons 😉

Jul 22, 2011 12:29 PM in response to kevinrobers

I had the same problem, the solution was resetting SMC: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

galileo1

Level 1

4 points

Jul 22, 2011 12:34 PM in response to kevinrobers

I can confirm that taking the battery out and resetting the SMC worked for me as well. I'm pretty sure I did this last night, but perhaps I didn't do it correctly.

Thanks.

jdcliff

Level 1

9 points

Jul 22, 2011 12:41 PM in response to kevinrobers

I've got the exact same issue!

Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0x8D)

Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.100.98.75.6)

I've got a late 2010 MBP running Lion and it works perfectly (of course it has different airport card and firmware. The 2008 MB is a no-go.

kevinrobers Author

Level 1

10 points

Jul 22, 2011 2:01 PM in response to jdcliff

Ok, this is REALLY strange... Because people were reporting that resetting SMC worked i've tried it again and wifi seems to be working... I'm REALLY sure i've done this before and done it correctly... The difference was that i had Lion DP4 on a external drive while i was working in SL and then did the SMC reset... After the reset i've booted DP4 and wifi was working... After that i've upgraded SL to Lion through the App Store and now it's working... I'm keeping you guys posted!

kevinrobers Author

Level 1

10 points

Jul 22, 2011 2:55 PM in response to kevinrobers

Mehh to early.. I needed to reboot twice and the problem came back... This is REALLY annoying

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Wifi won't turn on since upgrade to Lion