Since upgrading my iMac to Lion, the WiFi shows up as "no hardware installed" on the desktop. This is after showing a grey progress bar on the white boot screen. It only happens on first boot but works fine after a restart. I have tried deleting the Preferences folder as has been suggested for some MGP users. Does anyone have any thoughts?
iMac 2011, Core i7, 12GB RAM, OS X Lion
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7), 12GB RAM
I also think it is the flex connection cable.
I have a 2011 MB pro. I had intermittent connectivity losses after closing my MB when leaving the train and reopening it at the office. No networks could be found. A reboot would solve the problem.
Then after a while, I started to see 'No hardware installed' when I clicked on the (empty) wifi icon.
After replacing the wifi card, it worked for a while (so I suspected it was the wifi card). Then the problem came back. Now here is what I found.
The flex cable between logic board and wifi card has a connector on the logic board that sticks out a bit and which touches the case. I suspect that over the course of one or two years, depending on how much the MB is tossed around and used on laps, the connector suffers from pressure exerted through the case and the soldering points start to loose.
Once one soldering point gets loose I guess you will start to see unpredictable behavior - but all related to physical pressure on the back of your MB. One day it works all day (where you are actually sitting at your desk and not moving the MB around!), another day your wifi is gone. After carrying it around the connector will surely have disconnected a few times so wifi is gone, a reboot may bring it back once steady at a table top.
So the issue comes in disguise: we think it is sleep related - but it is actually related to what you do after you put it to sleep, which is of course put it in your bag and carry it around.
I came to this conclusion after carefully resoldering the tiny connection points of the flex cable (logic board side). (which is extremely hard, you need an smd soldering device plus a good magnifying glass and steady hands)
I also ordered a new cable which has not yet arrived. Mine had part number 821-1311-02 and I found one for $19 at PBParts.
Problem gone and has been gone since (one and a halve week ago).
I suspect that anyone who had the cable replaced, either as part of a card replacement or as part of a logic board replacement no longer suffers from this issue.
Also, it would explain why most suggested fixes seem to work for a while, with the problem jumping back in your face after a short while.
My suggestion to anyone who has these kind of issues is to order a new cable (not a used one!) and see if that works. It can be very easily replaced. Be careful when you take the old one off the logic board - mine was apparantly so bad that the second time I did that the connector came off the flex cable. So make sure you have your new cable at hand before getting the old one off.
Good luck to you all.
had the same problem and got the flex cables replaced, works great now
iMac 27" 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5
Same issue occuring, cold startup with wireless devices turned on puts iMac into safe mode(wifi no hardware installed). Currently turning iMac on first then wireless keyboard, mouse and trackpad.
WIFI ISSUE MACBOOK (late 2010) "solved" for my case!!!
I noticed, that after adding a new network (WPA2/WPA - encrpytion) I got the hardware issue (wifi: no hardware found after booting)
So after deleting the network under systempreferences -> network -> wifi -> advanced
I could use again Wifi connection...
I have a Lion 10.7.2 clean installation... Hope Apple will be able to fix this issue.
Just a litte bit dissappointed after having so many problems with my apple or with Lion...
Hope this help some of you guys.
I have a 2008 unibody Macbook. I started getting freezes after installing Lion, then it wouldn't boot past the apple logo. I couldn't run recovery or any disk.
A few times, when it did go in, the wifi showed no hardware found.
I had one last stab at it tonight, I zapped the pram again, which did nothing, then out of curiosity booted holding down D which is supposed to launch diagnostics. What it actually did was boot straight to the desktop with the wifi working!
I've no idea how this worked but it did, I'm just reinstalling Lion now from fresh.
Hope it helps someone else.
Not sure if this is a redundant fix, but I booted Windows using bootcamp to check the wifi card, which worked fine in windows. When coming back to osx, the wireless was recognized again. If you don't have a windows boot sector maybe get a copy of windows and try this.
Update ...I finally sorted my problem out, I removed the wireless card unhooking all the associated cables, guides on youtube, put it all back after cleaning connections with alcahol ... its been over a week now with no issues ... not one
I recently got the same problem on my MacBook Pro 2012 running Mavericks.
I had recently upgraded to an SSD but also replaced the optical drive with a HDD. Replacing the optical drive is definately not as easy and requires unplugging a lot of peripherals one of which includes the bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
I thought that could be the problem so shut down the Mac, opened it up and checked all of the connections to the back of the new HDD enclosure which were fine. I then followed one of the cables (ribbons?) to the back right of the laptop (the one under the power button). Sure enough the connection there was loose. I made sure this was firmly back in place. Replaced the back. Booted her up and Wi-Fi is back.
I believe this may happen again because the black casing is not completely secure and missing a couple of screws, which with some use could cause the cable to come loose again. It also means my laptop speaker distorts at the highest volume I am guessing because it is not secure it is vibrating against the casing, so I need to get some more screws and properly fix this.
If these software fixes do not work then it is most likely a hardware issue.
If you can open up your Mac then have a look, if not as previously mentioned just try applying some pressure to the four corners with the Mac booted down. Failing that you will need to take it to the Apple Store.
Hope that helps.
Do you use a wireless keyboard and/or mouse? Recently the problem hasn't happened if I boot the iMac and don't turn on the keyboard and trackpad until the grey login screen appears.
Open a terminal window. Type:
sudo rm -f /var/vm/sleepimage
This solved my problem. I upgraded to 10.9 and start having this issue randomly. ANyway, for the time being it seems to be working.
I have 2 similar threads posted here:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3234776?answerId=15829754022#15829754022
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3202303?answerId=15829568022#15829568022
I called Apple Care about this strange bootup issue 3 times. They refuse to discuss the problem with me and insist my machine is doing come sort of caching that can last from a few hours to a day. Well, I did a fresh install of Lion on my iMac i5 2011 model and it still has this problem after 10 days. My Mac is set for autologin and not to require a password on wakeup, but if I turn off the machine for more than 2 hours, I get that progress bar and login screen. If I login, wifi doesn't work and the menu bar is not clear. Other functions are hit or miss. In the words of Apple Care "just restart your Mac and everything will work normally".
I am stick of starting it twice every time I want to boot it. So you are not alone. But fortunately, it seems to only be affecting iMac and Macbook Pro owners with late 2010 to mid 2011 models. We are just lucky I guess.
And remember, if you find any other bugs, report it to Apple Care... they will remind you that it is not a bug, and is a feature! It's great to know Lion includes so many new features like this! Awesome! 😁
Apple store called...my macbook is back, new display (where the wifi card is located)....the wifi card was not working (failed hardware test while I was in the store)...will monitor this....if it turns out somehow Lion killed my card, I want the repair fee back...
I'm just updating the situation here. Since I replaced the wireless mouse and keyboard back in September and updated to 10.7.2 I have encountered no more incidents of this problem.
On the other hand my wife's older iMac running Snow Leopard now has a much worse version of this. After switching from a Windows Vista partition under bootcamp the OSX partition refuses to start, it just sits on the grey screen with the gear spinning. Removing all peripherals and several reboot attempts have not fixed it. It has no trouble restarting bootcamp or the Vista partition. I think the next step is to reinstall Snow Leopard and deinstall Vista.
Apple really should invest a bit of time in fixing this problem, before Lion becomes their Vista.
I have had this problem since I purchased my iMac in October 2011. It still isn't fixed, I just connected it to wired ethernet. I found that if I didn't enable BlueTooth until after the machine was up that I could use the wifi. My newer MacBookAir doesn't have this issue.
This is a hardware problem that Apple has been unwilling to admit to let alone fix. When I ask the "geniuses" about it they don't even admit this is a problem, I get the old "nobody else has ever complained about this" cop out.
Mines working now and I thought I'd put my 2 cents in.
I have a Mid-2010 macbook pro. Came with snow leopard installed on it. I had this "No wifi installed" issue for quite some time and I WAS running mountain lion. Things that I've tried:
Nothing worked for me. I resorted to using a USB network adapter and thought that it was just a case of me using my computer everyday for 6-8 hours a day for 3 years. Things get old and circuits get fried... even apple can't stop that. I'm not even going to try and understand the world of modern day computing and the fact that these computers are so far advanced than what I ever thought imaginable, therefore I'm not going to criticize the programmers at apple or ANYWHERE else for that matter. The only thing I could say is that someone should from apple should be around to stop this panic and do some PR work to do damage control.
Anyway because of another issue I ended up reinstalling my osx. this time with snowleopard using the OSX that was designed for my computer - Snow Leopard. Althought it's a step backward things in terms of my OS my WIFI has come back! stoked about that.
Some of the apps I need required I have Lion installed so I carbon copy cloned my hard drive (just in case) and I upgraded to Lion (not Mountain Lion) and my WIFI seems to still be working perfectly, no complaints (I'll keep my fingers crossed).
My issue (on my computer anyway, I know it's gonna be different for everyone) was that Mountain Lion doesn't play nice with my WIFI card. I'll stick with Lion for now and probably forever on this machine.
Good luck everyone.
Fantastic. Worked immediately with me. I should admit I took buddy's advice about physically shaking the machine as well. Didn't hurt to try two methods at once. So I disabled all sleep options on battery and charging modes and restarted it like you said. Totally came to. The problem just started this evening too. Good thing we have the Internet ay. Forums and information...anyway thanks bud you're a saviour.
Lion - WiFi no hardware installed
