Mac OS X Lion WiFi issues

AbraBaby wrote:

Your refusing to see or acknowledge the facts is infuriating and damaging to the conversation. That's what you've done. (So please quit.)

Because I choose to not be part of your hate rhetoric - it is infuriating and damaging to those that spread the rhetoric.

AbraBaby wrote:

Dear torndown, really, it's useless trying to talk to Carlo TD. The only way to shut him up is to ignore him. Unfortunately, it's either his job to be on this thread (e.g. paid by Apple) or he has no life and some weird fixation.

So he is always jumping in first and telling new folks the same nonsense. Even on the thread you pointed to, he is in there trying to blame everyone except Apple. And in his or her sarcastic, sniping way - especially for those new to this issue - sending them on a ridiculous runaround, and even shilling for them to buy MORE Apple upgrades and equipment. Shameless but apparently incorrigible and uncorrectable.

Numerous people on this thread and others have been to Apple Care and the so-called Genius Bar and I don't know a single person for whom this issue has been solved except on a very temporary basis. I am a longtime Apple user and lover and pretty tech savvy. It's not my router, which is a new Apple router. (It happens on every router I try to access.) It's not my neighbor's phone. (It happens everywhere I travel.) It's not my settings. (I've tried every possible configuration recommended and been to the Genius bar and confirmed they were correct; reinstalled, tried every fix; they were baffled.)

I have both a 2011 MacBook Pro that had GREAT wifi til I upgraded to Lion, and an Air on which Lion came pre-installed. Both have the same issue - and it clearly dates from the install of Lion. But people can't see what they WON'T see, you see? So Carlo is a hopeless case. I just try to prevent others from wasting a lot of time listening to his BS. Please just IGNORE Carlo TD's postings; he is not trying to help, he is trying to convince you that YOU are the problem.

The only fix I have heard of that holds is to downgrade the OS. Shame on Apple ... it's been close to a year.

I have been with this thread since very early on. Some of the suggestions Carlos has bought during the course of this massive thread have been helpful. And, he has been helpful to some users. He just clearly doesn't believe that this is a Lion problem though, which many users just as knowledgable as him (or more so) disagree with. I was willing to entertain ANY possibilities, but at this point from my experiences on here and on other forums, I believe it's strictly a Lion issue as well. But insulting him isn't really doing anything productive for the thread. Ignoring him likely is the best policy, and after this post I will heed my own advice.

And Carlo, you do talk down to people in the thread constantly. You are completely condescending to every new person that joins this thread. To each their own, but for you deny that is kind of ridiculous.

I took another look at the setup for WiFI. The general behaviour of this Lion sw is so incredibly unintelligent that I have started to wonder if I am watching the original Apple sw anno 2012 ? It actually behaves very primitive and behaves (at its best) much more like a WiFi software from the childhood of this technology 10+ years ago.

And I know what I am talking about because we made the mother of all wireless ipads at that time; The FREEPAD.

So, due to strange "drunken sailor" behaviour of this software:

Could it be a virus making fun of us ?

Could it be that Apple have done a blunder in the production and version control, so that we really does not have the latest software at all ?

Here are some observations:

1. While the Systray icon is showing the bads news NO CONNECTION, at the same time our local network is indeed CHECKED, and beside the network name it is the sign that it is encrypted and CONNECTED! This is not so, so the software is lying on status. (Lack of basic validation functionality?)

2. In paralell, there is the information "LOOKING FOR WIFI NETWORK CONNECTION". One may observe that this message is refreshed at regular intervals so this is just one very optimistic peace of software. Indeed! This optimistic search does not make any sense at all. For some strange reason, the software forget to check if there is antenna signal. Looks like there is no signal...

4. And for completeness, we can add that if the WIFI is connected, then the command Turn WiFi off must be avoided at all cost, because WiFi can't be turned on again afterwards.

5. At other times, it shuts down by itself anyway, as is known.

In addition to these signs of an unhealthy WiFi system, there are also other suspicious elements. For example:

1. To the rigth of 802.1X: it is normally placed the word DEFAULS which to my knowledge is not an English word ?

2. This word DEFAULS is sometimes replaced with DEFAULT, which makes more sense, but the replacement lasts only for a fraction of a second. I am unable to conclude on the logic here.

3. When pushing the CONNECT button, a text is shown for a fraction of a second, alternating between:

a) WI-FI IS CONNECTING, and:

b) WI-FI IS DISCONNECTING. (Doesnt make any sense whatsoever since the button is offering CONNECT only!)

Finally, there are other sign of a piece of software in heavy trouble, because there is another cool button with the text TURN WIFI ON. When pushed, this text is displayed:

SWITCHING WI-FI POWER WILL CAUSE ANY UNSAVED CHANGES TO BE LOST. WOULD YOU LIKE TO APPLY YOUR CHANGES BEFORE SWITCHING WI-FI'S POWER ?

In my humble opinion this message is not related to the text of the button in a very clear way. What is the user supposed to save away ? I can't find anything of importance... And why is there a so-so-not-so-logic nested SAVE feature inside another SAVE feature ? I suggest THE WILD GUESS BUTTON would be a much better name.

So what is all this? It does look like crappy software. Isn't it just too stupid to pass even the most humble of quality assurance control posts ?

Is it a virus, or really a software programmer on the loose ? Can it really be genuine ? I am starting to doubt that.

I have still not seen any response from Apple, anyone else seen anything ?

Kind Regards

C

I just decided to buy and install a 50ft ethernet cable going from my modem, through the wall and down the hallway all the way to my iMac, which is rather expensive. So, I guess ill just hold off on Mountain Lion....funny how that works.

Here is my 2 cents..

1) I have been reading that it may be Bluetooth. If you are not using a Bluetooth keyboard, try turning off Bluetooth.

2) I have been reading that it might be IPv6. Seach the forums for the command line instructions to turn off IPv6.

3) If you are using a Router on 802.11b/g, you may be having channel collision. This would show up as it working at the Apple Store, but failing at home. Try finding an app that will tell you the Signal Strength and Channel Numbers that your neighbors are using (e.g. Kismac). The 3 "safe" channels (no overlapp) are 1, 6, and 11. A lot of the Wireless Access Points and Routers come set to use Channel 6. Try one of the other safe channels (1 or 11) that your neighbors are not using.

Hope this helps.

I've made a very interesting discovery this morning while troubleshooting this issue. I was testing ping response times of a 2011 MacBook Air that came with Lion pre-installed from my workstation. The ping response times were all over the place, anywhere from 20-200 ms! I have been trying all of the different suggestions that people have provided and checking the ping times. No change. I said to myself, I might as well run Software Update to make sure I have everything, and sure enough when I fired up Software Update on my MBA, the ping response times dropped down instantly to >1 ms. I was thinking to myself, what did I do differently? I couldn't think of anything except for SWUD, so I stopped it, and immediately my ping reponses went back up and where all over the place. I resumed SWUD and they dropped back down. Freaking bizzarre I know!!! I have also tested it with simply pinging an apple site (swcdn.apple.com, support.apple.com) from the client and that seems to help as well. I've heard of people suggesting pinging facebook.com or google, but that didn't work for me, only the apple sites did.

I will continue testing today and keep an eye on things, but I just wanted to share with you all!

press the option key and then click your wifi at the top of the screen. It will give you info on your router and as you hover the mouse over your neibours you can see there info. You will then knew if you and other neighbors have the same channel.

I did just the same thing: reconnected the good old Ethernet cable. No WiFi-problems anymore. This is a defeat, it is supposed to work wirelessly, but it does NOT. Everything around me and my DSL-modem, PC's, iPads, iPods, iPhones, whatever, they all happily connect to the internet wirelessly. Except my brand new iMac 27" with Mac OS X 10.7.4 Lion. This machine keeps losing the WiFi connection between computer and modem at irregular intervals. This really is a serious problem and I don't understand why Apple neglects it.

BTW: this discussion fell silent on april 30th. Did I miss something? Shouldn't we do something regarding Apple? I know they are aware of this issue.

fritshof, a few comments:

- I think my comments and exposure of design weakness of March 21 worked a little bit as a silencer. Maybe I can ask you if you can confirm my findings stated in that comment? Yes or no on each point ?

- I have started to suspect this error could be a HW weakness or fault of my MacBook pro computer, because I have seen the WLAN disconnect take place as I (1) remove power plug or (2) physcially lift the machine from the table.

- So the machine is no longer a laptop but a stationary, and this has not removed but have reduced the problem. (Looses touch with WLAN several time a week still). It could be a mechanical design weakness perhaps exposed on some machines only. Erratic mechanical connections? This could explain why it does not help to eat an Apple a day to keep the doctor away and why Apple would choose to not respond; ignorance and subsequent embarrasement. If it were a sw problem, I can confirm that it takes at most a long weekend to fix ANY severe error if you really want to, not a +year as in this case.

(NOTE: However, Apple! Several important facets of this software, e.g. error recovery/detection, is indeed badly designed and should be revised with high priority)

- Thus, I have found myself a decent explanation of how to unmount the machine and I am going to try that one.

http://www.michael-hammer.at/blog/upgrade_wlan_mbp/

- I agree that if there is any way of contacting Apple regarding this haunting issue, it should be done. I am from Norway and if anyone in Apple would like to interview me on this error, feel free to notify me here and I shall give you a call. It is about time to remove this fault, isnt it ?

- How may Apple be contacted ? Any suggestions ?

Kind Regards

Carl

POSSIBLE FIX:

I've posted this on another thread with a similar topic. I understand that this might not apply to those of you with beand new Lion machines, but I do believe this will fix it for those who upgraded from SL, due to a corruption in the Keychain. So. Here's the letter I've posted elsewhere:

I'm a certified Apple Consultant and this fix worked for me on a client's home network. I present it without any warranty/guarantee/promises, etc. Use at your own risk. Don't try this if you don't know what you're doing. Please infer any of the other usual legal ramblings.

Client had a Linksys E3000 with Cisco software. She had an Apple Store Genius upgrade her MacBook Pro from 10.6.8 to 10.7.3. Upgrade was uneventful.

When the client returned home, she noted that every time she put the computer to sleep, logged out or rebooted, one of two things could happen:

1) Her network could not be found and it did not automatically reconnect. She could only find it through looking for networks manually in the Network Preferences pane.

2) Network scanner located the network, but asked manually to join an already-known home network and requested the password every time.

She did not have the same problem on other networks. Only at home. Consequently the Genius Bar could not recreate the problem to help, and several calls to AppleCare failed to resolve the issue. Then, I got the call.

I imagine if you're reading this, you've also frustrated yourself with all the usual potential fixes: deleting System Confguration files, rebuilding the WiFi config, clearing PRAM, reparing permissions, changing the WiFi channel, etc.

I'm here to suggest the problem can only be addressed on the router side. Yes, I firmly believe this is a Lion issue, but nothing you do in Lion -- including reinstalling the OS -- will fix this problem if it happens to you. So here's what I finally did:

1) Upgraded the router's firmware to the latest version.

This did NOT solve the problem.

2) Completely reset the modem to factory settings and reconfigured it.

This still did NOT solve the problem.

3) Completely reset the modem to factory settings, reconfigured it AND changed the WPA2 password.

THIS FIXED THE PROBLEM. I waited 5 days to post this to ensure that it was still functioning properly for the client. It is.

Here's the vague theory behind it: Something about the upgrade to Lion also corrupted her Keychain. I can't go into details, because it would take forever and I'm only partially sure I understand it myself, but suffice it to say that there were other Keychain-related issues. No matter how many times I rebuilt that WiFi configuration or messed with system files, it came back. Even deleting the Keychain items related to this network didn't take care of it (and honestly, one of the items reappeared immediately after quitting and relaunching Keychain Access. I saw it with my own weary eyes.)

Once the WPA2 password was changed on the router, it forced that router's profile to be re-saved to Keychain, and I think that made the difference.

I'd like to add that I feel strongly that it was a combination of things that finally fixed it. So I believe following the instructions below will solve the problem for many of you. Please report back here if it does work! As you can see, many people are having this problem.

1) Delete the WiFi profile in Network Preferences.

2) For good measure, you may also want to delete the file /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences but I don't know if this going to be necessary.

3) Update the router's firmware to the latest version.

4) After it has been updated and restarted, Completely reset the router to factory settings and start the setup from scratch. DO NOT USE THE SAME WIRELESS PASSWORD AS BEFORE. This is the crucial part, I believe.

5) Recreate the WiFi profile on the computer, inputting the new password.

That's it.

Sorry for the long-winded note, but hopefully this helps a lot of people.

Hmmm, interesting, thank you! Maybe I'll give it a try, have to think it over. Will report back when I have something to say.

Regards,

F.

Since I have started to use Lion I keep having dropping out issue.I changed my ADSL provider,3 different routers and 3 different passwords.It keeps dropping out .Very frustrating.I also followed all possible steps I found from the Internet and talked to helpline. I already bought my i-mac reluctantly.I am not an Apple fun at all.And I do not think that I will buy any Apple computer again....

One fix for the wifi connect problem!!!!!

I want to thank ThaOne for his message. I tried that solution and it fixed my wifi problem. I will repeat the messsage here.

Go to Library/Preference and copy SystemConfiguration then delete the folder and restart your computer.

I have been fighting this problem for over a year now. Today I implimented the fix on three computers. An imac 27", a macbook pro, and a macbook. All three computers exhibited wifi problems before the fix. The problems I saw were the loss of connection with my router requiring that I turn off wifi, turn it back on and then connect to the router. It has been very frustrating when it happens 10 times a minute.

Since implementing the fix, I have restarted all of the computers numerous times, I have put them to sleep and have logged in other users several times. When I switch users or come out of sleep, I see the airport symbol hunting for the network, it finds it, connects and everything is normal. My wifi connection has been stable for the last 6 hours, which is about 5 hours and 50 minutes longer than it has been stable for the last year.

I firmly believe this has fixed my problem. Maybe it won't fix everyone's problem but it should be tried by everyone having a similar problem.

One fix for the wifi connect problem!!!!!

I want to thank ThaOne for his message. I tried that solution and it fixed my wifi problem. I will repeat the messsage here.

Go to Library/Preference and copy SystemConfiguration then delete the folder and restart your computer.

I have been fighting this problem for over a year now. Today I implimented the fix on three computers. An imac 27", a macbook pro, and a macbook. All three computers exhibited wifi problems before the fix. The problems I saw were the loss of connection with my router requiring that I turn off wifi, turn it back on and then connect to the router. It has been very frustrating when it happens 10 times a minute.

Since implementing the fix, I have restarted all of the computers numerous times, I have put them to sleep and have logged in other users several times. When I switch users or come out of sleep, I see the airport symbol hunting for the network, it finds it, connects and everything is normal. My wifi connection has been stable for the last 6 hours, which is about 5 hours and 50 minutes longer than it has been stable for the last year.

I firmly believe this has fixed my problem. Maybe it won't fix everyone's problem but it should be tried by everyone having a similar problem.

Well, I hope for you this solution will stick, but I really don't believe in it. I'm interested in your report after a significant length of time, 6 hours is not enough to convince me. BTW: I'm not comfortable with the idea of deleting the entire SystemConfiguration folder. There's a lot more in there than only network-things. And what do you want me to do with the copy you advise me to make of this folder? Could you be a little more specific?

Regards,

F.