Update to Mountain Lion 10.8.5 has killed my wifi access. Help needed.

this apple joke just gets worse and worse! First Superdrive, and now wifi! I was just about to download 10.8.5 but you saved me. Thank you OP and I hope your problem gets resolved soon!

APPLE, I AM NEVER BUYING ANOTHER APPLE MACHINE AGAIN!!!!!

While it does seem a lot of late '08 MBPs are being hit by this glitch, my late '08 15" isn't one of them. I wonder whether Apple used different wifi cards in the late '08's. FWIW, mine was one of the initial release (10/15/08 purchase).

I have the same problem. It will search and search for networks.

If I remove the wifi under network and reboot then add the wifi back under network then my wifi will work for that session. If I reboot it reverts back to search for networks continuously.

This happend right after the 10.8.5 update.

I also read to try and install the 10.8.5 combo update, wifi worked durring the frist reboot but then reverted back to the way it was after.

IT'S back .....

I know not why, but I opened to work and no wiFi .... it had been ok for day +

installed the combo update ..... still no wifi

**** them .... I'm sorry to say I will probably have to lose an entire day and do the OS X resinstall (lost day for backups and all the bother before doing the reinstall)

am thinking hard about how to do this and not want to shoot myself .... just as I'm about to new HD to 1TB .... hmmmm .... it's a pan and very inefficient to use ethernet, but at least that does work ....

hmmmmm

Interesting thought. Here is the card type from the late 2008 15" Macbook Pro that lost wifi after the 10.8.5 update. I got this information from System Information - Network - Wi-fi.

Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0x8D)

Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0

Alas, appears to be the same wifi card in mine:

Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0x8D)

Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0

I don't know if this will help but I had the same problem. I was on with tech support and they said try reinstalling 10.8.5 and do NOT update the airport software from MAS. In fact he said to NOT update the airport firmware at all until a fix can be found. He was right! I upgraded to 10.8.5 and did not upgrade any of the airport firmware. WiFi is fine and been connecting strong for 3 day. . .

Hope this helps others. . .

You are not alone, I'm finding LOTS of people with this issue immediately after updating 10.8.5, myself included. My system will not fully turn the card on to allow a connection. Booted from an older system backup, wifi works as usual.

I've tried repairing permissions, ran cleaning and cache clearing utilities, zapped PRAM, reset SMC, hard reset both router and Macbook, re-installing Mountain Lion, and pretty much every other recommended fix, with no luck.

I've seen a suggestion on another thread, somebody had luck installing 10.8.5 combo. That's next on my list to try (will try without airport update, thx for the tip), in another two hours once the 830Mb file downloads. If that doesn't work, I'm back to 10.8.4, as that's the only consistently working fix I've found in my two (wasted) days of googling and desperately trying things to get my wifi back.

Mine is also:

I hope it works for you. I always use the combo updater when I update OS X, so it was part of the initial problem occurrence with this issue for me.

Unfortunately, no luck with the 10.8.5 combo update. It actually did work for about 10 minutes after I ran the combo update and repaired permissions; but while in the middle of posting an update here to say it worked, my computer randomly restarted itself, and when it came back, no wifi. So it's back to 10.8.4 for me. 😟

I had this problem on a MacBook Air 2011.

Went into Network in System Preferences and under Wi-Fi went into Advanced then under the TCP/IP tab, I clicked on 'Renew DHCP Lease'.

Been connected ever since whenever I needed to be and have had Zero drops. I used to get tons of dropped connections.

Mine was a Netgear dual band (2GHz/5GHz) router that had DHCP setup to autoconfig, fwiw. And it worked with every other non Apple device I have (Android, Windows, Sony, DirecTV) without any probs.

Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0xD1)

Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0

I had this same problem on my 2011 iMac. I tried everything and nothing worked in the end I downgraded to Lion.

My MacBook Pro however upgraded to M Lion without problems. I've heard its so random that downgrading to Lion and then reinstalling back to M Lion does not necessarily mean you will have the same problem again with your wifi.

Go into System Preferences/Network and delete "-" the Wifi service; reboot; then go back into System Preferences/Network and recrate the Wifi service "+"

Renew DHCP Lease was a temporary fix for me, wifi went away again after the next restart. Deleting and re-adding Wifi Service on my Network Preferences didn't work at all. The problem seems to be in turning on the wifi card. My menu bar icon says it is on (but grayed out), but my Network Diagnostics says it is turned off. No issues whatsoever if I am booted from anything other than 10.8.5.

Still kicking myself for not backing up before the 10.8.5 upgrade, last time I'll ever make that mistake. In 25 years as a loyal Apple customer, this was never something I had to worry about, because it always just worked. I'm in a state of disbelief over this whole thing, and working on five lost days at this point. Thanks, Apple.

I've been attempting to downgrade to 10.8.4, as it still seems to be the only reliable fix on record. Is it normal to take 20 hours to download necessary components for a system install when booted in Recovery Mode? I've cancelled the process twice already because I don't have the time to spare. Let it run overnight the second time before giving up. Those who did downgrade, was it the same for you?