Wi-Fi: No Hardware Installed on MacBook Pro 8,2 (15 inch, Late 2011)

Hi Everyone,

For the second time now, I have to bring my Macbook Pro 8,2 (macbookpro8,2, 15 inch, late 2011) running Mountain Lion back to the Genius Bar due to a unrecognized Wi-Fi Airport adapter. The computer was purchased in March of 2012.

The problem started as I was watching 'The Daily Show" online, when suddenly, I lost connection. I clicked on the wi-fi adapter icon on the top menu bar, and saw that no access points were available when there normally were over 20, including mine in the house. I went into the network settings under system preferences and saw that the wi-fi card was off (although it was just on and still showed the full-signal indicator in the menu bar), and attempted to click the button to turn it back on with no response. All other options were either greyed-out or displayed no information. The Hardware tab didn't even display and the mac address suddenly became all zeros.

I rebooted the computer, only to discover the wi-fi indicator on the menu bar displaying no signal. Upon clicking on the icon, the dreaded "Wi-Fi: No Hardware Installed" was displayed. I tried resetting the SMC and PRAM/NVRAM with no success. I also rand the Hardware Troubleshooter ( Option - D upon bootup ) which neither saw the communications device nor reported finding any problem.

I brought it to the Genius Bar, and they ended up replacing BOTH the Logic Board, Wi-Fi adapter, and connection cable between the wi-fi adapter and logic board on July 23, 2012.

Now, it's October 10, 2012, and last night, as I was working through a VPN tunnel on the terminal on one of our remote servers, the SAME THING happened AGAIN! The connection was dropped, same scenario as above, and upon bootup I was greeted with the "Wi-Fi: No Hardware Installed" message again.

The hardware magically disappeard with no mention of this in the Console, as far as I can tell. The Console mentions the loss of connection and inability to contact DNS, but nothing relating to hardware.

For the record, the bluetooth continued to function both times I've had this issue. The first time this happened, I was running Lion and now I'm running Mountain Lion.

So apparently there is something really wrong with either the physical enclosure causing a short somehow, the quality of the Broadcom chip on this wi-fi device, or there's some type of software/power causing the chip to short out.

My compouter is as protected as can be - it's in a Speck plastic housing with a keyboard cover, which was purchased after the first incident, I use it on a hard flat plastic laptop tablet at home, and carry it around in a Timbuk2 Laptop bag. It also has never been dropped.

What's the problem here? Has anyone else had this problem?

Thanks and all the best of luck and success solving your own computer problems 🙂

An Admin Becoming More And More Superstitious The Longer He's In This Profession,

TeaKae