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2008 mac mini with OS X 10.7.3 constant wifi errors

I have been fighting to keep my Mac Mini connected to my wireless router ever since installing OS X Lion.


We have 5 macs in our small office 2 MBP2010 & 2011 flavors, an old Black Mac Book (2007?) & 2 x 2008 Mac Mini's


Since upgrading to OS X Lion the mini's are having constat problems connecting to wifi networks, throwing the error "connection timeout error", the rest of the computers are fine.


I was using the below process successfully connect until today, now it's just permanently giving me the error, nothing I try will fix it. Please help, these are perfectly good work stations (other than this issue) and they are now costing us untold hours trying to get them online.


Thanks!


In case it helps anyone else the following process used to work for me, though it's a total PIA:


Step 1: go to "Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences" - to get there open a finder window, right-click user name folder, select "open enclosing folder", navigate to "Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences"


Step 2: delete the file “com.apple.alf.plist” & “com.apple.alf.plist.lockfile” from within “Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences”


Step 3: delete the folder: “Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration”


Step 3.5: empty Trash


Step 4: Restart Mac - at the same time reset (power cycle) modem & router.


Step 5: Open System Preferences -> Network, Select airport connection, then click on "Advanced", under "DNS" click the "+" under "DNS Servers" add "8.8.8.8" - repeat, add "8.8.1.1"


Step 6: In System Preferences -> Network, move the airport connection to the top of the list - do this by clicking the gear icon, select "Set Service Order ..." drag "Airport" to the top of the list - click ok


Step 7: Turn off Airport, Turn on Airport - select network to connect to

Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7.3), Mac Mini mid-2008

Posted on Feb 27, 2012 3:35 PM

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3 replies

Feb 28, 2012 3:10 AM in response to MacFanBran

Precise same issue here. 2008 Mac Mini, updated to 10.7.3 now getting connection timeout errors.


Couple of things for me that seem different to other reports: the wifi indicator stays solid for me (other people have reported it dropping then re-connecting), and there were no problems at all before.


I have a Bootcamp partition and Windows works ok, although there was some trouble connecting last time to the wifi router, but the connection stayed solid once that was resolved.


Looking at Wireshark, I can lots of repeated HTTP GET requests for a failed connection, although TCP looks relatively normal. There's nothing abnormal in the firewall logs, or anything specific in the logs at all, except for SSL failures logged by Chrome. I was getting the "Frequent transitions for interface..." error yesterday but the logs are silent today.


I'm going to try the 10.7.3 combo updater and if that fails try to figure out how to reinstall 10.7.2 - no TimeMachine backup, and yes that is a lesson I've learned.

2008 mac mini with OS X 10.7.3 constant wifi errors

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