Wireless stays off after resume from sleep, must reboot

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Level 1

13 points

Wireless stays off after resume from sleep, must reboot

I have a MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2008) running 10.8.4.

About once a week, a frustrating bug is seen. When waking up the MacBook after sleep, the wireless fails to wake up properly. It stays off. The taskbar icon remains off (empty triangle), but confusingly, the pulldown menu thinks wireless is still on, as it displays "Turn Wi-Fi Off" and the last network name that I was using! Selecting "Turn Wi-Fi Off" or the network does nothing. The Network control panel is more correct, showing Wi-Fi as Off and giving me a button to turn it on, but unfortunately, that too does nothing.

Console is full of this message, rapidly repeating, several times per second:

kernel: WLAN adapter PCIE config space was not restored (stateNumber = 2)

Looking online led me to this page:

http://www.redelijkheid.com/blog/2012/12/8/os-x-wireless-connection-problems-sol ved-

Tried the suggestions there and they didn't help. What's interesting is that the problem goes away on its own after a reboot. That seems to be the only way to fix it. If I try messing with the network stack, trying to force it to turn off and on again or anything like that, then unfortunately, it gets confused even after the reboot, and thinks it's online while it's really offline (or vice versa). Another reboot again, to clear that up.

Has anybody else had this problem recently? Any additional information that would be useful? I searched online for this error message and saw a few other posts but that's about it. Hopefully this will jog somebody's memory. Does Apple care about this problem, or not? It would be unfortunate if they don't. I realize my laptop is rather old by today's standards, but it has worked fine, and this really seems like a software bug to me (not a hardware problem).

Josh

Posted on Aug 14, 2013 12:37 AM

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Answer 1

nbar

Level 5

7,019 points

Aug 14, 2013 12:48 AM in response to Krellan

Try and rebuild your kernel cache via the Terminal Application. Copy the following bolded command and paste it into the command line prompt:

sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions ; exit

Wait two minutes and reboot.

2) If no help, try resetting your router. Shutdown your machine. Reset your router. Let it run for two minutes. Turn your machine back on

3) If nothing still... I would suggest reinstalling the 10.8.4 combo update, either via recovery mode or Apple's website.

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Answer 2

Aug 15, 2013 12:08 PM in response to nbar

I have had the same problems as every other MBP retina user. the solution for me was the following

i have changed my router settings. my only active channel now is channel six. i have disabled the auto channel configuration. this is a solution that works for a lot of people.

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Answer 3

Krellan Author

Level 1

13 points

Aug 27, 2013 4:35 PM in response to nbar

Thank you. The problem just happened again today.

Strange that just touching a directory would make any difference. However, in Console, I did see some "rebuilding kext" messages fly by, so I know that it was doing something. It was hard to read them, though, because the "WLAN adapter PCIE config space" error message kept spewing and scrolling off the Console window.

The problem usually goes away after I reboot, so I'm not sure if it was truly fixed or not.

It's not an issue with the wireless router, other computers are stable, they have no problems.

Router is already locked down to a single channel, so it can't randomly change channels on its own (I dislike when they do that). Channel is good, there is little interference in this area. Verified this with the rather cool "Wifi Scanner" application.

My Mac is an old MacBook Pro, not Retina.

Will look for 10.8.4 combo update if the problem happens again, although I don't think that will make a difference. It really seems like some kind of bug in the driver. Does anybody else have this problem?

Josh

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Answer 4

Krellan Author

Level 1

13 points

Sep 12, 2013 1:43 PM in response to nbar

After being good for a few weeks, it happened again.

It happens both at work and at home, so I can rule out any particular bad Wi-Fi setup or router or intereference or whatever. The error seems to be that of a lower hardware layer, not related to any Wi-Fi network that I'm on. The problem is with the card itself. I can't seem to wake it up from sleep properly. When I close the lid on my Mac, it goes to sleep, and shuts down the Wi-Fi, however, when I wake it up again, the Wi-Fi isn't there.

I see this error in Console, repeating endlessly:

WLAN adapter PCIE config space was not restored (stateNumber = 2)

And so on.

It happens about 10 times a second!

All that logging slows down my Mac. Fortunately the log buffer size is limited to 4000 messages, so it doesn't fill up all my memory/disk space as well.

Does anybody else have this problem?

I feel like I'm the only one.

I'm running a MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2008), with 6 GB of memory. It's OS X 10.8.4 (12E55).

Is there a way to keep the Wi-Fi connection active, even when the computer is "asleep"? That would be great. Then, not only would it work around this problem, I would be able to keep my network connections active. Android has this feature which is rather nice 🙂

Josh

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Answer 5

Krellan Author

Level 1

13 points

Sep 16, 2013 10:33 PM in response to Krellan

Just happened again. Unfortunately, I can confirm that it still happens in 10.8.5 and has not been fixed.

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Answer 6

Krellan Author

Level 1

13 points

Oct 30, 2013 6:50 PM in response to Krellan

I was really hoping that it would finally be solved in Mavericks, but unfortunately, this is not the case. It just happened again tonight, after resuming the computer from sleep.

What's different is the error now appears only once in the Console log, instead of being spammed about 10-20 times per second. Previously, the spam was so great that it slowed down the computer greatly until I rebooted. Now, the computer still remains usable, albeit without any working Wi-Fi hardware. It works fine with a wired Ethernet connection.

WLAN adapter PCIE config space was not restored (stateNumber = 2)

Anybody else noticing this problem continuing to happen in Mavericks?

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Answer 7

Nov 26, 2013 2:37 PM in response to Krellan

Yes i am having this problem as we speak, its been happening for the past 2 months and i went in to the apple store and they said that it could be because the internet card wiring travels through the joint where the screen swivels open and close, and therefore therre could be a bad connection in there but my computer is an older model (the first set of steel bodies macbook, not a pro and not a unibody) and because of that they said it wasnt worth spending money to change the card if we dont know exactly what the problem is and since i could just buy a wireless wifi antenna (which i hate that idea, and didnt do, and have been using an ethernet cable)

What could this be, have you found a solution without having to change out any hardware?

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Answer 8

Krellan Author

Level 1

13 points

Mar 13, 2014 4:38 PM in response to Krellan

No, I haven't found a solution.

I can confirm that it's a hardware problem, or an OS bug, though.

I upgraded to a new HD. Took the opportunity to do a clean reinstallation, not an upgrade or restoration. So, I can rule out any software change I made in the past. The problem just started happening again, within less than a day of doing the reinstallation. So, that rules out any software thing I might have done in the past, perhaps a bad configuration setting. The complete reinstall is a chance to start completely over.

The wireless comes back to life immediately upon reboot, but it has to be a full reboot.

The bug only happens when trying to wake up after sleep. When waking up from sleep, it will be dead, with that "PCIe config space" error message scrolling all the time in Console, however, when rebooting, it works perfectly after that... until the next time a sleep happens! Strange. Because of this, I find myself rebooting my Mac more often than Windows these days, sigh!

I'm running Mac OS 10.9.2 (Mavericks).

Has anybody else made progress solving this issue?

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