Mountain Lion no Wifi after wake from sleep

Hey guys,


I have the following problem:


after I wake my 17" MacBook Pro 8,3 (early 2011) from sleep by opening the lid, it starts searching for a WiFi network to join. It will just keep searching and searching, without ever finding anything. When I try to click on the WiFi icon in the menubar I get the beachball, also the System Preferences are affected by this crash - I can't go to "Network", it also beachballs. The only way out is a restart.


To prevent this from happening I can disable WiFi before putting my mac to sleep, but that's quite inconvenient. I have disabled all Auto Proxies, tried to delete the known networks from both the Network pane and the Keychain.


😟

MacBook Pro (17-inch Early 2011), OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Jul 27, 2012 11:06 PM

Reply
421 replies

Sep 2, 2012 2:47 PM in response to Jasper Boeke

There have been a lot of posts since then, so missing it is understandable. I just wanted to point it out to you and others so that if you wanted, you could go back and find the details. Also, maybe some of the more recent posters might see this and it will fix it for them, too. I think some have said it didn't work for them or they had the issue in Lion as well. But for others, it's worth a try.

Sep 2, 2012 6:46 PM in response to Explorerguy

I have had this problem since upgrading to Lion. I have tried all kind of resets as suggested by Apple support.

I have tried downgrading to Snow Leopard driver as suggested by some posters here.

I have tried switching to unused channel on the router. Nothing works for me 😟

When I brought the macbook to Service & Repair, they could not fault it even after 2 days. The only difference there was they use Airport. So the suggested solution was to buy airport router. Which to me was not a solution at all as I travel frequently and there is no way of making sure every hot spot in all the countries I go to use airport.

Yes wifi drops out when I am away from home too.

Has anyone tried using external wifi dongle?

Sep 3, 2012 11:35 AM in response to ilovecode

I commented a while ago about this issue on my early 2009 iMac. I've since done a clean install of the operating system from the recovery partition and the problem has persisted. I have tried removing and .plist files that someone suggested, and the hard reset of the router. I don't have Transmit installed, as I don't use it. I would prefer not to have the iMac set to never sleep as that is a huge waste of energy; however, having my computer need to be restarted every time I wake it from sleep has made it pretty much unbearable to use. I really hope that Apple's engineers can address this issue.

Sep 5, 2012 9:30 AM in response to ilovecode

As soon as I installed Mountain Lion, I noticed the same problem of the "searching for wi-fi" menu icon after waking from sleep, which turns into a spinning beachball if I try to select a network. I think some separate problems are mixed into this thread, but that's been the main problem for me. I've never restarted my computer so many times as in the last few weeks!


I use Transmit every day, but I've never enabled the menu icon option. However, I have noticed that if Transmit is running when I wake from sleep -- even without the menu icon -- I will have the networking problem. So my solution has been to quit Transmit before sleeping my computer. If I remember to do this, I'm fine when I wake it up ... if I forget, then I lose my network connection (even Ethernet, BTW, which I use at my desk) and I have to restart.

Sep 5, 2012 11:26 AM in response to Arlo Leach1

FYI, I don't use Transmit and have had the same wifi issue you have. That may exacerbate the problem? I had to move computer sllep almost all the way over to "never" (3 hrs) to fix most of my wifi connectivity troubles, but there are still issues, i.e., though I'm still connected to the internet, when I type in a URL, it can sometimes take a long time for the window to open. Not sure what's going on there? Eventually, the speed returns to "normal."

Sep 6, 2012 5:14 PM in response to evanwins

In my case I can do anything I want to on the computer while the networking is stuck, as long as I don't try to enable the networking. Unfortunately in my case it never connects. Well, at least not after 15-20 minutes of waiting. Perhaps you have a different problem, or a different variation on this one ... I like yours better because I've found no alternative but a restart!

Sep 10, 2012 4:45 AM in response to ilovecode

Add me to the list. Unable to connect to wi-fi after waking... spinning beach ball... hard re-start required. I've tried all the fixes proposed in this lengthy thread. The problem didn't start until after I upgraded to Mountain Lion. I've told the rest of my family and friends to stay away from Mountain Lion until Apple rolls out a fix... What a hassle.

Sep 10, 2012 11:01 AM in response to Joe Muscara

Well, I have a 2011 MBP, and upgraded to 10.8.1.. and got the same issue many are seeing: If you close the lid or sleep, it disconnects and doesn't reconnect automatically.. However.. apparently - following the suggestion in this thread - If I turn of the menu bar indicator, it magically now reconnects properly again.


Definite OSX 10.8 bug. I hope they fix it quickly. Not having an indicator of WiFi status is annoying,.. but better than not having Wifi..?

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Mountain Lion no Wifi after wake from sleep

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