IMAC wireless keeps stopping or disconnecting (every 30 mins)

i have this problem too im have to turn off wi-fi and turn on again

Imac 21.5 os x Lion

Hi, I have the exact same problem!

Was it a hardware problem? How did they solve it?

Oh I see.. but it looks kind of sold to you no?

How did you change the DNS, what did you do?

I also have a question, I've read it could be because of a lots of Wifi available around. I live in a building, and there is like 15-20 connections detected by the mac. How many do you have?

Is anyone from apple around?

here is what i am learning after three new computers from the apple store in two week for the same issue. first apple does not have a fix. i suggest you take the computer and demand a new one, or at least a discount . apple gave me a new computer yesterday and the problem still es there can not reconnect to wifi after sleeping. they did give 10 percent off the original purchase price because of the problems. The thing that tweeks me is apple is still selling these computers with these issues and not letting the consumer know. I am considering starting a class action because there are thousands if not houndred of thousands of people with this same issue. apple needs to wake up. would you keep a new car if you had to jump start it every time you wanted to drive it. I think not

From what I'm experiencing, and reading the comments of MANY others, this seems to be a problem with LION OS. Mine doesn't (or at least hasn't yet) cut off the wireless connection while its actively on, but it does so every time the Mac goes into sleep mode. I then have to manually reconnect by either clicking the ampitheater signal icon in the upper right corner of the screen, or reset the wireless router. Although that's not all that difficult, it's also an inconvenience and should certainly not be happening. I think we all need to stay on APPLE until they figure out what is causing this and issue an update which will fix it.

mine does the exact same thing... really annoying consider i wanna use it as a media server...

I am having the same exact problem on my imac running lion 10.7.3. wireless disconnects every 5-30 minutes then I have to turn it off then on again for it to reconnect. My sister also has an imac with the same problem, although she did not upgrade to lion. I've tried so many fixes that I can't even remember them all. It is obvious to me that the problem is the imac because all the other devices on my wireless network are working fine except for the imac. By other devices i mean my iphone, ipad, and my PC laptop. This problem has been going on since the beginning of the year and I am fed up. Apple we need a fix! Any suggestions are very welcome. Thanks.

Same problem here. New iMac 27", Lion 10.7.3, WiFi. Everybody around me is WiFi-ing happily away, while I, on my beautiful but expensive iMac loose my connection as soon as the first one opens his/her MBP or iPod touch or even Windows notebook. Grr. Dear Apple, we know that you know. We Need A Fix!

I have tried numerous suggestions for a solution, none works. Could it be that the Atheros 4.0 driver for the Airport Extreme card inside the iMac is the culprit, like I read somewher? That's the only 'solution' I didn't dare to try because it involves interfering with kernel extensions, and that's too tricky for me.

Please Apple, don't ignore this problem. It's really there.

well i just recently took my imac in because it failed to startup (hard drive fail)....

BUT... when i got it back from apple with a clean and brand new hard drive, i haven't had the internet drop out on me since, and it's been about 2 weeks (i use it as a media server while i'm on a road so it's always on)....

so it COULD be a software preference problem?

i forgot to tell them about the wifi issue when i brought it in, and on the repair order it didn't mention anything about repairing wifi or anything like that... the only thing fixed was the harddrive and a clean install...

so i'm keeping my fingers crossed hoping the problem doesn't pop back up... if it does, i'll report back..

I finally found a fix, and it was in a different forum:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3704573?start=90&tstart=0

I will repost it here:

FrameThought

For What it is Worth

I had experienced wifi drop problems after updating to 10.7.2, late last year. It was really frustrating few weeks, which lead to a frantic search for solutions.

I had found an answer in the following link, which I had used. It was successful, and I never faced wifi drop problem again.

Two weeks back, my imac auto updated to 10.7.3, and wifi drop problems resurfaced again. Initially I didn't realize it was related to the update. However, once I thought it could be, I searched and found that the wifi drop problem is again happening with 10.7.3

Luckily, I had bookmarked the link, and had the local copy of the details of the earlier fix.

I tried the same with 10.7.3, and to my great relief it works.

No wifi drop after this fix applied on top of 10.7.3

My system is 27 inch imac, late 2009 model.

I credit all the thanks to the original contributor of the fix in the link.

As I have seen so many frustrated users venting their ire with respect to this problem in this forum, I want to share my experience and a possible solution/workaround.

Please try and share your experience with this approach.

http://rys.pixeltards.com/2011/09/04/osx-lion-wifi.html

----------------

From me:

I went to that link and downloaded the file, followed the instructions, and now I have been going 24 hours strong - the wifi only dropped once instead of every 5 minutes. Although its not perfect, and Apple majorly let me down, this works for now, I'm no longer going crazy.

I might also add that on 2/24/12 Apple released a Wifi update: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1501?viewlocale=en_US that addresses an issue with wifi dropping during sleep/wake (different from my issue). After I followed the advice above, I noticed that my wifi doesn't drop anymore, except for when my computer goes to sleep, then wakes up. In that case, all I do is turn off my wifi, then turn it back on, and I'm connected. No further drops. I can live with that for now. I will try to reinstall apple's wifi update to see if that solves the problem. Any advice is welcome.

Thanks & Good Luck.

I am experiencing the exact same issue with my brand new 27inch apple imac running lion. I purchased my imac on Feb 9th 2012, and within a week, I realized that it was having issues staying connected to the internet. The imac would not connect to the internet when I would wake it up from sleep, and it would constantly drop wifi signal. I thought that maybe my router was the issue, but every other computer in my house, including a $250 netbook remained happily connected to the internet while the imac just sat there not loading my webpage. The airport symbol is 'on' but it appears that I'm not actually connected to the internet as pages do not load. I can 'fix' the problem by clicking the airport off, and then back on..and then I am able to reload/view the page. Some days, I get kicked off the internet every 10 minutes or so..VERY ANNOYING! I'm scared to make a purchase using the computer lest I get dropped in the middle of the transaction. I have tried EVERY fix that has been mentioned on just about every mac forum online...I have even done a reinstallation. It 'fixed' the problem for about a day, but then it began to drop the signal worse than before. Once I started to search online to see if there was a work around for my issue, I realised that lots of other people are having the same problem. However, when I called apple support, they told me that they hadn't heard of any wireless connectivity issues..but that they had a patch for the wireless issue/computer not connecting after sleep. After spending close to $2000 on a computer, I expect it to work. I'm really tired of checking every day to see if there is some kind of fix for this, but judging from the fact that many of these posts are almost a year old, and customer support is passing the buck on this one, I really think that we all need to band together and put some real pressure on apple to fix this issue. So we seem whiny when there are hungry people in the world and we are complaining about our expensive computers but I'm sick of this and I don't think we should have to beg apple to believe and acknowledge us. It's supposed to work. Period. Lets start writing tech writers and reviewers about this issue. It seems like they only respond to problems once the media gets ahold of the information and embarasses them. If you're listening apple, all I'm asking for is for my computer to work the way it is supposed to..and a little responsibility on your end - if there is a problem, it isn't going to kill you to admit that there is an issue and that you're engineers are working on it...

I agree with you that Apple is being very negligent on this issue - I called in to get help and they wouldn't talk to me because I didn't have "Apple Care"...blah blah blah. He wanted to charge me $49 to talk to him for an issue that is truly their fault. It's really upsetting, and the first time that I've ever experienced such annoyance with the company. I think it's a great idea to write to some tech writers and such if thats what it will take to get apple to care about the problem. Your issue sounds exactly like mine. Please see the post i submitted a minute before yours for a good temporary solution.