Airport menubar item is sluggish??

Question

Level 1

16 points

Airport menubar item is sluggish??

Hey Everybody,

I've been hanging around this forum for a while now and I haven't seen anybody post about this. My problem is that when I'm in an area that doesn't have any of my preferred wireless networks, and I want to connect to a network that I know is available ot me, the airport menubar icon is very sluggish when I try to click on it. A lot of times I will click on it to select a network, but it will take 2 to 3 seconds to actually activate and drop down a menu. Once I'm connected to a network, it appears to work normally. Has anybody else experienced this. When I had my iBook, it worked perfectly and I guess I wish it could be like it was then. I know that the MBP has completely different WiFi hardware than the PowerPC based Macs. I guess that maybe Apple has some more work to do on their drivers. Thanks in advance for any help or insight.

MacBook Pro 2.16 GHz, Week 23, 1 GB DDR2, 100GB 7200 RPM, Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Posted on Jun 30, 2006 5:10 AM

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Answer 1

Jun 30, 2006 6:43 AM in response to charrison

My particular system is fine although I do notice a slight hesitation with the Airport icon as well (not a big deal). You may try repairing permissions. Even though you appear to be pretty savvy on the Mac, I’ll post the instructions anyway.

PERMISSIONS
Go to: Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility
Select: your Hard Drive
Select: the First Aid tab
Select: Repair Permissions
Hope this may help resolve the issue.
Regards,

MBP-15" / 2.16 / W8612... Mac OS X (10.4.6) G4 Tower (OS 9/10), Dell 620 WorkStation (XP Pro), Gateway P4 (XP Home)

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Answer 2

charrison Author

Level 1

16 points

Jun 30, 2006 7:13 AM in response to Digital Dude

Thanks for the help. I actually repaired my permissions yesterday after installing 10.4.7 just to iron out any small bugs that cropped up from the update. But unfortunately, the menu bar icon is still pretty sluggish and unresponsive. It's something I can live with, but i was just hoping that somebody here had the same problem and had found a fix for it. I imagine that Apple's airport driver will see some improvement soon as it seems like other people have had problems with it producing kernel panics and having the signal dropout a lot.

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Answer 3

Alex6

Level 2

395 points

Jun 30, 2006 5:54 PM in response to charrison

Whenever you click the menu, the Airport quickly re-scans all available airport networks. I'm not sure why it got slower for you since your previous computer, as it has always been sluggish for me (I've been using Macs for over 12 years.)

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Answer 4

valend

Level 2

150 points

Jun 30, 2006 6:13 PM in response to Digital Dude

Digital Dude, what does the repair permissions function do? Thanks

d

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Answer 5

Niel

Level 10

726,845 points

Jun 30, 2006 6:53 PM in response to valend

Using the Repair Permissions command sets the permissions on files and folders which came with Mac OS X or an Apple software update to those specified in the receipts which were installed with that software; in recent versions of Mac OS X, it also recreates missing symbolic links, which are basically pointers to different items on the hard disk.

(13718)

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Answer 6

valend

Level 2

150 points

Jun 30, 2006 9:03 PM in response to Niel

how often should this be done? d

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Answer 7

Jul 6, 2006 6:15 AM in response to charrison

May or may not help...

In your list of trusted networks (System prefs>Network>Airport) you can drag them in to the ORDER in which you want them to be tried. My home network was near the bottom of my list of 3 or 4 and took a while to connect but after dragging to the top it worked MUCH quicker.

Hope it helps
Ben

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Answer 8

Jul 6, 2006 7:25 AM in response to Ben James1

This does help if I'm in a preferred network area, but I agree with charrison. My MBP can sometimes take upwards of 30 seconds to start listing available networks. From that point on, it's fine. This used to be an almost instaneous process with my old PowerBook when I woke it up from sleep in a new location. I'm not sure if there is a fix (or if this is really a bug) - it could just have something to do with different hardware or driver for the MBP than what was in my PowerBook.

MacBook Pro 15.4" 2.0GHz, 2GB RAM, 100GB HD @ 7200 RPM Mac OS X (10.4.6) PowerMac Dual 1.8GHz PowerPC, 1.5GB RAM

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Answer 9

dot4f

Level 1

0 points

Jul 8, 2006 2:16 PM in response to charrison

I too have this problem. When clicking on the Airport icon it will take several seconds before a drop down list appears. This is very frustrating because I have a habit if just clicking, not holding down my click until the list appears. When it is acting sluggish like this, the menu appears for a second, and then immediately disappears because I didn't hold my click down.

I never had this issue on any of my prior macs (This machine replaced at 15" PowerBook 1.67)

This is really annoying since there are already so so so many problems with this machine -- Airport in general on this machine just has so many bugs, and apple has had adequate time to fix them by now I feel. I keep hoping that the next system update will fix things - but so far they have just been making something else break.

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Answer 10

Jul 17, 2006 7:19 PM in response to charrison

I have the exact same experience and have not had the experience on my previous macs. It takes WAY too long for the menu to pop up, and when waking from sleep the networks (even if they have good signals) will sometimes all drop out of the list, then come back again before I can actually select one. VERY poor behavior, especially when it works better on other (older) systems.

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Answer 11

georgeer

Level 1

0 points

Jul 18, 2006 2:00 PM in response to charrison

Same problem here, though I'm on the black Macbook, not the MBP. The airport menubar is REALLY slow, taking 30-60 seconds to load networks after waking from sleep. It also alternates showing available networks and showing nothing on later clicks. Really annoying.

I've also had problems connecting to many public wi-fi networks as well, but that may have a different cause.

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Answer 12

Orcinus

Level 2

210 points

Jul 18, 2006 2:13 PM in response to charrison

Happens to me too. Not a big deal, though.

The fact that sometimes i open up the airport menu item and get an empty list and have to close it and click again to get it to actually list the AP's in vicinity, bugs me a lot more.

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Answer 13

Jul 25, 2006 5:45 PM in response to georgeer

I thought maybe it was just me, but I'm also having trouble connecting to any sort of truly public wifi network. Coffee shops and private networks seem to work fine, but any sort of city-funded wifi gives me an error any time I try to join it.

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Answer 14

hey joe

Level 1

0 points

Jul 30, 2006 2:11 PM in response to charrison

Air Traffic Control widget conflicts with the built in airport menu item. Make sure you have the atc widget disabled/deactivated in dashboard before using the menu bar item.

15 Macbook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.7)

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Answer 15

Jul 30, 2006 2:50 PM in response to charrison

I've got the problem as well, and it is quite irritating.

I also find it irritating that the menu can't tell me anything about the signal strength of the various networks prior to connecting. This gripe doesn't really have anything to do with the MBP per se, but seriously what is up with that?? This is a pretty basic feature found in Windows and other Unix-based connection utils.

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