Mac OS Lion: Massive wi-fi-problems?

Hi, did you already try Apple's update form 08-17-2011? This fixes a wifi issue : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4764 . Worked for me.

Even after the new update,that should fix the wifi problem,my iMac still doesn't work the way it should.

Actually, now it's even worse.

The connection keeps dropping every 5 to 10 min.

Bought this fantastic iMac 28th of July but after almost 1 month I'm realy getting sick and tired of this machine.

Thinking about returning it and never buy an Apple product again unless there is more support and I don't mean this expensive and useless AppleCare because thats realy money for nothing.

Thought it would be a relieve to work with OS X but it's just the same as windows, only problems.

I spent a lot of money for my iMac 27",3.4 GHz i7 but it wasn't worth the money.

Realy regret buying it.

Oh, btw during this little note I lost my Wifi internet connection 4 times. Grrrrrrrrreat..

I had the same frustration you're experiencing now but all is not lost.

I was fortunate enough to have Snow Leopard as my original OS so I was able to backup everything and then erase Lion and install Snow Leopard. Did this about 10 days ago and absolute BLISS! No probs of any kind and I don't miss Lion because there is hardly any difference other than one or two minor widgets

I love my iMac and I love Snow Leopard because IT WORKS!

Don't lose heart, lose the Lion, then you will be happy because the iMac is truly brilliant.

Good Luck

Aidanmac

I have been on the phone with APPLE CARE this morning and they were very helpful and enabled me to fix my wifi issues.

Before speaking with APPLE CARE I tried so many of the unusual little tricks on this board (and others) which seemed to be working uniquely for certain people. It turns out the problem in my case isn't LION as such, or my WiFi rather it's to do with the SECURITY on my ROUTER.

I had an old MacBook at home which was very useful as I was easily able to make the adjusments on my Router through this to then later allow my new iMac (LION) to log on etc.

I'm using a NETGEAR router, but the procedure will be much the same for other routers etc.

What I did was sign in to my router (on my older MacBook in my case):

http://192.168.0.1

Put it my USERNAME and PASSWORD (which, by the way, is usually:

USERNAME: admin

PASSWORD: password

Then selected WIRELESS SETTINGS.

Within WIRELESS SETTINGS there is a subheading entitled WIRELESS SECURITY.

Within WIRELESS SECURITY there are four options:

1) Disable

2) WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy)

3) WPA-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected Access Pre-Shared Key)

4) WPA-802.1x

I had

2) WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy)

!! THIS WAS THE PROBLEM !!

According to APPLE:

WEP is being used less frequently as it appears to be not as SECURE as it's contemporaries (namely WPA etc). As a result LION struggles to communicate with the router using this security. BUT the good news is it CAN be easily changed!

For a home setup Option 3:

3) WPA-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected Access Pre-Shared Key)

Seems to be the best option. Option 4 is a for a bigger setup (I wasn't listening too much, but apparently it's more suited to businesses using their own servers/networks etc?!).

Next things we did was:

SELECT OPTION 3:

3) WPA-PSK (Wi-Fi Protected Access Pre-Shared Key)

After selecting it asked me to enter a new password, so I did.

Then I selected APPLY (or SAVE depending on your router). It took a minute to load...

Then I went on to my new iMac (LION) clicked on

SYSTEM PREF > NETWORK > ADVANCED and REMOVED (pressing the negative / '-' symbol) the network I've been struggling to get on for the last two days.

Then ADDED (pressing the positive / '+' symbol) a 'new' network giving it the same title obviously as the one I had just deleted. It'll ask what SECURITY you want of the options, but just leave it as 'None' (as your WiFi will work it out itself). After this press ADD, then OK in the next window. Lastly press 'APPLY'.

After this - go up to your WiFi putton on your top bar, click it, then select the new network you've just created (which will of course have the same name as your old one) then when asked for a password put in your NEW ONE as you created on your ROUTER...

...Alas IT SHOULD WORK!

It did for me, and the chap on the phone was so very useful and said this will be in the info they'll be putting on the discussion boards ASAP. I'm sorry if ym explanation has been a ittle convoluted as I'm not a techy person, but wanted to share this after sharing the struggle with so many.

Good luck!

Same problem, same expensive computer that drops connection. And lucci, that fix isn't for everyone. I actually took mine into the store last week and they replaced the aircard and said it was fixed... took it home and it droped connection about 10 times in the first day, it might have been more but thats the amount of drops I got during 1 hour of actually using it.......

At the risk of annoying someone with repetition I again offer my 10 step, absolutely surefire, can't fail, certain fix for this problem.

1. Get Snow Leopard disks

2. Backup everything but do not use Time Machine - use independent Backup Utility or Drag and Drop to an external drive. See note re Backups below

3. Once you have backed up everything disconnect the external drive.

4. Restart your Mac with Snow Leopard Install disc in the drive holding the C key until blue screen.

5. Open Disc Utilities on the CD and then select the Macintosh HD

6. Click on ERASE

7. Restart holding the C key and do a clean install of Snow Leopard

8. Reinstall other software as required.

9. Learn the lesson from this.

10. Get on with your life.

Note re Backups:(Time Machine backups from Lion will not work once Snow Leopard re-installed)

I've been there and done that, no T-shirt but peace in my life and on my iMac

IMHO Lion has nothing to recommend or raise it above Snow Leopard in terms of end user functionality and reliability.

We all made a mistake that any of us who have been around Mac for any length of time know, or should have known not to do! - e.g. Never buy into any first or even Second generation Apple Hardware or Software.

That's no insult to Apple, they always get end users (suckers) to buy and field test their offerings and identify all the bugs which Apple then address in later iterations of the particular product.

All but the latest newbies knew this but a huge number of us got caught and we're embarrassed for making such a novice mistake.

Swallow the pride.

Dump the Lion.

Love the Snow Leopard.

We'll all probably get back to Lion 10.7.6 - maybe!

Aidanmac

Not much good for those that have Lion pre-installed, also under the hood there is a huge amount of difference security wise between Lion and SL. Letting Apple know about the issue in a bug report is more useful than getting people to go back tbh. Fair enough if they dont like Lion and it is causing them to lose vaulable time, but fixing bugs is the best idea. Lion will get updates and the more epeople complain the better, and believe me SL had its fair share of bugs in even 10.6.1 like possibly losing your main account if you signed into your guest account! My Lion imac does not so far drop wifi at all, but it is a little slow on reconnecting. I wonder if its to do with the new airport card in the iMac (thunderbolt) that has three antennas and the older iMacs with just two, it would be interesting to see how many Thunderbolt imacs have the same issue vs the older imacs.

The solution is not to configure the router or any other apparatus that Apple claims will correct the problem. Supose you are in spot with a public networks, so everybody will ask the owner of the router to configure his network. That's insane. Listen folks !!! Listen Apple !!! The problem is with that piece of software named OS X Lion, that Apple claims to be the "The New King of the Desktop". King of what? The King of Erros !!! Listen folks !!! Apple must find a solution for its software and not we. Let's growl at the ears of Apple : We bought a software and we want it working, or at least that Apple is caring to find a solution.

Hi all

I think it is time we started an iPetition to get Apple to sort out the Wi-Fi problem. For me after installing Lion my Wi-Fi now says "Wi-fi: No hardware installed" and if I have to go to an Apple service centre then I would need to travel at leest 100 miles so time and cost in petrol would be out ragious.

George, I have taken my MacBook Pro to my nearest repair centre and they are going to replace the Airport card. This will cost about $155 USD to repair. Everyone who has check over my laptop can't conclusively determine the cause only the problem. So with no option, a new card is being installed and I will collect it tomorrow.

All the best with your issue.

Hi Jag-Sound

I got my iMac 28/07/2010 so it's just over a year old and I got the Lion update on 24/07/2011 and I have just been on to the Apple site to see if my garantee has run out and it has but not untill after I installed the Lion update that has broken my Wi-Fi because it now says "Wi-fi: No hardware installed"

Do you think apple will do anything about the problem?

Ta

this is exactly my situation and strangely, my virtual machine on lion (winXP on parallels) CAN indeed get to the internet, while Safari and firefox on Lion just sit there. oh the irony.

Well mine had the same exact problem (25.5 imac 2011), would constantly drop connection every few minutes, which meant that I couldn't stream music or play games, or much of anything. Did fixes on my router and nothing, all other devices would work but my imac. Took it to apple support and they replaced the aircard, still gave me problems.

So I went into my router's configuration again, but this time I changed it from "Up to 150mps" to "Up to 65mps b/g/n mixed mode (neighbor friendly) with WPA2-PSK [AES] security.

On the basic settings I changed "Account Name (if required" to the name of my network id. Not sure if it helped.

But I rebooted the system and the router after applying the changes and I havn't dropped connection in 2 weeks!!!

This discussion needs some clarification, is the problem a dropped connection or an OS problem? First, open terminal and perform a nslookup using a dns name, such apple.com. it should return an IP address from which can be used with the ping command. You could also ping apple.com. The response should be a continuous connection listing. If it does not there is a problem with DNS resolution. To verify, this ping the IP address. If a continuous connection listing, the problem is DNS resolution.

This is a known problem that has been on discussion forums since Snow Leopard. The temporary solution is to kill mDNSResponder. I don't have the exact command with me at the moment but Google kill mDNSResponder to find it. It will start with sudo.

This will be a temporary fix and will have to be repeated.