Wifi: No Hardware Installed after 10.7.3 update?

wifiguru wrote:

roflcoxib,

I installed that SL hack on 10.7.2 and when I upgraded to 10.7.3, it broke my WiFi. I had to do a clean install and then upgrade to 10.7.3 to get my wifi working again.

Anyone else did that SL hack on earlier 10.7.x versions ? I think that breaks your WiFi.

Which is exactly the thing I warned about in several forums.

If you ever hacked Wi-Fi this way, you'll have to either reinstall the previous Lion kexts or do a fresh install of Lion.

I had exactly the same problem on my 2008 MacBook. I've had to TimeMachine my way back to 10.7.2 and Wi-Fi is happy again.

The only change I've made was to the Atheros kext when I upgraded to 10.7 from 10.6.x which I did after looking around the web to find out why 10.7 made safari in particular so awfully slow. I downgraded the Atheros kext from V4.0 to V3.2 and it seemed to help (despite not having an atheros card...!). Could this be the cause of my 10.7.3 update having this exact wi-fi issue?If so, how do I go back to the v4.0 atheros kext?

Yes - If you manually install the incorrect drivers into Mac OS X, the update mechanism will not operate correctly as it expects the correct Apple-shipped drivers to be in place.

Your only solution is to either find the correct drivers in a backup or do a clean install of Lion and re-apply the combo updater (the combo updater knows how to update from 10.7.0 to the current version.)

I guess you could use Pacifist 3.0 from CharlesSoft http://www.charlessoft.com/ to extract / install just the necessary kext(s) from the 10.7.x Combo update.

Hope that helps,

Thomas

I've got a somewhat different, but also weird issue: Most times when I boot my MacBook (5,1) after not using it for a couple of hours, it comes up with Wi-Fi disabled. Problem then is that I cannot switch it (Wi-Fi) on from the menu bar or the network pref pane. System Profile just looks like this:

After a couple of reboots (three to four on average) Wi-Fi is on all of a sudden. I can then switch it off and back on again; also no problems with reconnecting after waking from sleep. System Profile in that case:

I'm totally clueless what this is all about. I have already applied the 11D50b Combo, reset PRAM and SMC and tried all kind of other things, all of which did not resolve this issue.

Any idea?

Best,

Thomas

Thomas Cloer wrote:

Any idea?

Probably a bad AirPort card or one with a bad connection to the main board.

Since I never had any problems before 10.7.3, I would simply exclude that explanation.

I have exactly the same situation as you Thomas. It's definitely software related as I had no problems before 10.7.3 either. I have been able to try Wifi on different modems, different networks and various other wifi facilities across the country (Australia) and it's always the same. Continual rebooting eventually gets me Wifi but often when I go to System Prefs, it shows that it's off even though I have a successful connection at the top of the screen and can access the internet. However, this is short term of a few minutes before it cuts out.

I have downloaded the 10.7.3 Recovery file using Command R and I still have the same problem.

I've about given up on solutions and am using a mobile broadband USB modem to connect where I cannot plug into ethernet. Expensive but I have some data left on my SIM. When that's gone I'll have to purchase a wifi USB adapter I think as I need to access ftp sites continually because of the large files I have to move around.

Thomas Cloer wrote:

Since I never had any problems before 10.7.3, I would simply exclude that explanation.

That's fine, as long as you can come up with a rational explanation as to how software would "know" your machine had not been used for a couple of hours.

Great, just upgraded to 10.7.3 and now my Wifi has "no hardware installed". I feel like being trapped in a Microsoft update environment, can I do a rollback of the update to be able to work wireless again? iMac 2 years old, running Lion.

Hi macberk,

I'm not here to argue with solutions suggested by Apple representatives (as claimed by kevp453), but in my case installing het 10.7.3 combo update didn't work before, so I'm hesitant about this solution and haven't tried it myself (yet)...

So I would suggest to try the above first, but if that doesn't work...

...then check if your AirPort-card is 'miraculously resurrected' (like mine) if you restart your Mac in 'Rescue Mode' [press the 'Apple(CMD)' key and the 'R' key on your keyboard simultaneously during startup for Rescue Mode]

...if it works then, I think my solution explained in this other thread will do the trick for you :

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3704573?start=60&tstart=0

Hi Toon (dutch I presume?),

I am to try your proposed solution, it's very annoying to discover that installing Lion over Snow Leopard is not the best option to take.

Thanks for your time!

Hi macberk,

I just read today that Apple has completely withdraw the basic 10.7.3 upgrade ; as of now all upgrade paths will use the 10.7.3 combo update to minimize the risk of hardware detection errors.

That being said, I would suggest to try the Terminal-using reconstruction solution explained above and doing a new combo update afterwards...

Only if that doesn't work I would suggest 'my' solution

;-)

Hi Toon.B,

Last night I've tried both options, unfortunately without results. The wifi remains 'no hardware installed', seems to me that I just have to sit and wait for Apple to fix this bug. I've run the same update on 2 Macbook pro's, which do not seem to have this problem. Somewhere last year also my ethernet connection passed away on the machine, so there could be some other issue at hand here. Though it is strange that wifi broke after the 10.7.3 update.

Thanks for your suggestions