Mountain lion wifi problems

I've been an Apple user since 1984. I troubleshoot Mac products as a hobby. This is frustrating. iTunes struggles to find my devices no matter how many times I reboot my Mac devices, router, modem, or reset configurations, or do any of the zillion things that are suggested on this or any other thread, my WiFi just is not stable. Device plugged in or not, wifi on my iMac turned on or off, Ethernet or not...doesn't matter. No rhyme or reason for it. I give up syncing wirelessly until Apple can figure out a fix.

Hi! I'm having the same wifi problem as many other users here. I have a mid 2010 iMac 27' that was running Snow Leopard until I decided to purchase and upgrade to Mountain Lion few days ago. Everything's good, but wifi. I sometimes turn on the computer and sometimes I have to do a small operation that fixes my connection, and sometimes it's connected right away. You never know.. sometimes it doesn't bother me for hours, and sometimes it disconnects in 30mins. So if anyone wants to know what I do to fix the connection, here it is:

PREFERENCES -> NETWORK -> ASSIST ME -> DIAGNOSTICS -> select the location you usually use -> click continue and select your router (you know it's name I guess) and then just follow the process to the point where the system's gonna recognize and refresh your connection and there it is - your'e connected again. But as I said, that doesn't repair the problem forever. You actually need to do that everytime it disconnects.

Anyhow, the reason I'm really posting this is because I'd like to know whether the LAN cable would solve the problem? You know what I mean, no wifi, no problem.. that's how I see it. So I'd like to know if anyone has tested that method already? I don't want to buy 7 meters of LAN cable to discover it doesn't solve the problem.

I truly believe that some of the next updates will solve the wifi problem.

Thanks for the answers in advance!

You are right: no wifi, no problem. Same wifi-problem here. Problem vanishes when you connect computer and router/modem with the good old ethernet cable. The wifi-problem still remains, but it won't bother you anymore.

It sounds as though it's Mountain Lion is experiencing problems across the board with WiFi. I have a brand new iMac running 10.8.2. The problem that I experience is with iTunes not recognizing my devices (iPhone 4S and iPad 3) via WiFi. I've talked to Apple on several occasions (including today) about the WiFi issue, but they don't seem to have a remedy for the problem. It's not stable. Sometimes iTunes recognizes my devices; sometimes it does not. As I've said before, I've updated firmware, software, hardware, rebooted and restarted everything. It's just not stable. I prefer to run my iMac via Ethenet since it is more stable and faster than WiFi, but that doesn't solve my problem with iTunes. So, if the WiFi problem is indeed with Mountain Lion, then Apple needs to get on the stick a create a fix and send us an update.

It s*cks man, so it's definitely ML that keeps making problems. 'Cause if a brand new iMac experiences troubles with wifi it can not be related to hardware. I'm kinda sure they'll fix the problem, I mean it's apple. I know their stuff is way to expensive to justife them for making a mistake, but it really is like that - mistakes happen. I seriously don't care about wifi if ethernet works. I'm buying a LAN cable tomorrow. =)

I had a nice e-mail exchange with the manufacturer of my modem/router, a FritzBox WLAN 7360, quite common here in The Netherlands. They told me that in cases like this, they advised customers to instruct their product to EXclude the use of radio channels 12/13, and to UNcheck the option to use radio channels optimized for 300 Mbit/s. I took their advice, and after searching for a solution for over a year, this finally did the trick for me. At last! WiFi between modem/router and iMac has been stable now for more than 4 days, while it dropped the connection at irregular intervals before. Problem solved, no more ethernet cable! Of course I don't know how to do this on other brands of routers, but I'm sure you will find a way. I had to go into 'Expert Mode' on the FritzBox in order to fix this. Scary, but it worked.

It is now obvious that the WLAN-card (or more likely its firmware), built into the newer iMacs, is to blame for all our anger and despair. It's really time now for Apple do something about this, or to issue general instructions how to handle this problem as a minimum.

I am too having a issue with the Mountain Lion OS and Wifi dropping out. It drops out at the most inconvienent times as well.

I do Lets Play videos regularly on Youtube, and I can be in the middle of a upload, and the wifi will simply cut out and I will have to start all over again, its just NOT acceptable Apple.

I was just watching a TV show with Quicktime on full screen, and when I came back Wifi was killed and my upload link was severed. STAHP THE MADNESS APPL!

Fix meh OS plz.

have you read and done any of the steps mentioned above in the whole thread? changed your router to WPA2 security? as that seems to work. also create a new network location have you done that? have you deleted all the keychains for wifi in the keychain app?

Since some days same problems here.

Using Mountain Lion (now) 10.8.2. (& TimeCapsule 7.6.3 as Router). It seems to be a ML problem since one co-worker also using ML has the same problem (repeatly dropping wifi connections), but not a SL user. As the identical symptons appear also at home it is not a problem with the wlan router (because no problems at all using iPhones and/or iPads). ML is dropping the connection (after view minutes) and fails to automatically reconnect/establish a new one. I do use ML since the very beginning, but only experience wifi-problems since a view days.

Also tried various suggestions from this posts, but to no avail.

Not shure if recent TC updates are the cause of the pains (in my case i also have a TC at home).

This is really disappointing!

For my case, I had problems with intermittent WiFi after a trip to China. Nothing mentioned in the previous replies worked for me.

But one thing fixed my problem completely. I changed my router setting from using "Mixed b/g mode" for WiFi to "g only." After that I have stable WiFi for two days till now. Don't ask me why, but try it if you haven't. Maybe it'll work for you too...

On what kind of Mac do you experience this problem?

I struggle with the same problem for over a year now, and it becomes clearer and clearer to me that this is a problem of frequencies and optimizations in WiFi-land, things a normal person does not know about. The manufacturer of my modem/router (a Fritzbox 7360, quite popular here in Europe) advised me to switch off radio channels 12 and 13, and to deactivate the channels optimized for 300Mbit/s, whatever that means, because, and I quote:

'Various WLAN devices or adapters do not handle these channels very well.'

which would mean, in our cases, that certain WiFi-cards built into our Macs are not up to their tasks. I have suspected the Atheros WiFi-card (with 4.0 firm- or software, 3.x is ok) in my mid 2011 iMac for a long time, but nobody seems to agree, certainly not Apple. They remain silent.

The manufacturer's advice certainly worked for me. No more WiFi-drops for 3 weeks now! You probably did something like this by changing from b/g to g only.

Oh yes. Since i installed 10.8.2, tried every possible tweak, read all the threads about it. It's the first time i'm actually writing about it. I had high hopes for 8.3

The best result i got was getting wifi to detect and connect effectively for a few hours at some point (maybe 1 month ago). And then it died again after.

If you have tried "every possible tweak" there are no more left. More likely is that you have not tried 'every'.

Have you deleted and created a new connector, have you tried other security methods, have you tested with security off.

What have you tried?

It's of course a figure of speech that has the intent to show that for a "simple" computer user as myself, i did try a lot of things for a long time now. i'm not sure about naming each and every one of them but i'll try to list the categories:

- PRAM, SCM

- New Location, deleting known networks,reordering internet connection methods..

- Router (i do have other devices connecting perfectly to it, as was my MBP before 8.2) : changing channel, MTU, changing from WEP to WPA2, activating WPS, deactivating everything and resetting a new different SSID...

- Keychain : deleting the known and stored network lines

- Kext files : i'm not sure what i did with those

- New MBP users : created two other fresh users with different profiles...

- Hardware tests

- Going to different places with diferrent WIFI routers and settings

i do agree that this might not cover "every possible tweak", as nothing is absolute. But i'm just tired of trying.

To summarize the problem: Lion and Mountain Lion have problems recognizing Apple wireless routers.

Since 2007, I've been using an Airport Express router. Over the years, several Macs, one PC and one iPhone 3GS have been connecting to this router without any failure, each of these devices having run on various versions of its operating system.

The problem started to occur when I installed Lion. It was hard for it to see the router, while it kept finding without problems all neighbouring non-Apple routers. I often had to try several times. The problem persisted with Mountain Lion but was greatly improved with the 10.8.2 upgrade. However the 10.8.3 upgrade was a catastrophe as it just does not see my Airport Express. I then did a full reinstallation of my Mountain Lion partition but it keeps not seeing my router. Of course I tried all the recommended manipulations to try and fix it but got nothing. I'm writing this message from my Snow Leopard partition.

Fed up and on my way to a computer store to buy a new non-Apple router.