Don’t turn off Wi-Fi in 10.9! (And how to recover a frozen Mac if you do)

While I definitely had the same fan and freezing issue you did, it may not have been the SMC reset that fixed it... it may have been a clean install, which I did in the process of dealing with the wifi freeze issue. Unfortunately, I just can't remember. Anyway, if you have not yet done a clean install of 10.9, I would give that a try. Good luck!

Hi everyone!

I'm also having the freezing problem with my MBP late 2007 (2.2GHz). I've tried SMC, NVRAM, etc and the problem appears to solve for some time then it strikes again. I just disabled the sleep mode (set it to never in configuration panel) and everything is working fine.

Regarding the suggestion of etresoft to test hardware by making a clean install of the older version of OS X... well, my original install disk (Snow Leopard) wont install anymore, at least it will not allow me to install over Mavericks (the classic "This version can't be installed on this computer.")... I have used this media to clean install/reinstall Snow Leopard several times in the past but now, with Mavericks installed, it asks me to reinstall from Time Machine... dead end for me.

I suggest to do as etresoft said, install a clean copy of an older OS X (may be on an external drive) and make several tests with WiFi and Ethernet and see what happens. This can discard a hardware failure and (luckily) the rest of the world (those out of the "me too" group) will take us and the issue a bit more seriously.

AMD.

To downgrade the OS, you have to erase the target disk. That means you have to boot with the old installer and manually run Disk Utility first. It is annoying and may take a few tries, but it is not something you have to do very often. Furthermore, you can always install the old OS onto some external drive and boot from there.

I had a 1st generation MacBook that had a similar Bluetooth failure. It would only fail when I ran under the new OS (I think it was Snow Leopard then). A Snow Leopard bug - open and shut case, right? Not so much. After a while, it would eventually failed on any OS, so I just kept it turned off.

etresoft wrote:

To downgrade the OS, you have to erase the target disk. That means you have to boot with the old installer and manually run Disk Utility first. It is annoying and may take a few tries, but it is not something you have to do very often. Furthermore, you can always install the old OS onto some external drive and boot from there.

Thanks for your prompt response... I was trying to install SL in a external drive with no luck, using the same SL installer to format the partition and after several boots and tries I've abandoned the quest... I have found an older SL Time Machine backup but I have a lot of work to do before I have some free time to start the sequence of reinstallations, may be the next weekend.

I had a 1st generation MacBook that had a similar Bluetooth failure. It would only fail when I ran under the new OS (I think it was Snow Leopard then). A Snow Leopard bug - open and shut case, right? Not so much. After a while, it would eventually failed on any OS, so I just kept it turned off.

Yes, sometimes you have to give up some features to squeeze the last drops of juice from your favorite tool (at least, this is my case, my first mac), as long as it is not blocking your work/fun/whatever...

Perhaps the hibernation issue and the WiFi issue are related... I don't know how the hibernation process works, but... what if during the hibernation process the system shuts down WiFi? what if the hibernation process takes long enough for the system to hang after that?

Hi Everyone,

Just to add my 2 cents to this discussion. For me this is clearly a software issue as my MBP3.1 Santa Rosa is also exactly with the same problem. This is unacceptable, and shows the amount of care dedicated to the MAC line from Apple nowadays. It does not make sense to launch a new OS every year that takes a year to become stable.

And we are almost forced to update due to the programming tools for IOS.

Regards,

Pedro

pmsobral wrote:

Hi Everyone,

Just to add my 2 cents to this discussion. For me this is clearly a software issue

as my MBP3.1 Santa Rosa is also exactly with the same problem. This is unacceptable, and shows the amount of care dedicated to the MAC line from Apple nowadays. It does not make sense to launch a new OS every year that takes a year to become stable.

Why are so few people seeing it then? If it were related directly to Mavericks, it would be universally seen, would it not?

Pete

Hello petermac87,

It looks like it is universally seen by (at least) the owners of MBPs 3.1.

MACs with 6 or 7 years are still very good (my with an SSD is still perfect).

Obviously they are not the focus group for testing new OSs because there is no time...

Pedro

pmsobral wrote:

Hello petermac87,

It looks like it is universally seen by (at least) the owners of MBPs 3.1.

MACs with 6 or 7 years are still very good (my with an SSD is still perfect).

Obviously they are not the focus group for testing new OSs because there is no time...

Pedro

What evidence to you base that comment on?

Pete

It happened to me tree times. Wi-Fi Off, computer froze.

And there are similar cases in the discussion to warrant that it is predictable and general in MBPs 3.1.

Sergio Huarcaya wrote:

It happened to me tree times. Wi-Fi Off, computer froze.

And there are similar cases in the discussion to warrant that it is predictable and general in MBPs 3.1.

Eight people? Makes it a general issue?

Good Bye & Good luck.

Pete

Hi all!

Just for the sake of discarding things and following the thread of a bug in the driver and after reading about bugs in past versions of wireless drivers in OS X, I decided to test a couple of those (old) drivers in Mavericks to check what happens if I switch drivers so I installed a clean copy of Mavericks and made some tests:

0. Setup: A clean copy of Mavericks on an external hard drive (no updates, no iCloud account association, no extra software and system config untouched).

1. Test 1: Use the wireless option on the Recovery partition

I remembered that the recovery partition also has a wireless option “just for emergencies”. This is a minimal configuration so I suppose only essential drivers are loaded.

Logged in to the Recovery partition, configured the wireless network, opened Safari and browsed Apple site with no issues. Waited a couple of minutes and everything was still ok.

Time to disable wifi… turned off wifi and in about a minute the system froze.

2. Test 2: Check for the expected behaviour in the new install

So, logged in to the new install, browsed the web a while and turned off wifi… system frozen as expected, reboot in single user mode and recovery with Ira’s suggestion => System up and running again.

3. Test 3: Replace current drivers (kext’s or kernel extensions) with old ones

This test involves the replacement of the current kext (IO80211Family.kext) stored in /System/Library/Extensions, with old ones (from SL and Lion). You can get these from old backups.

3.1 From Snow Leopard, version 3.2 (320.1)

System started up and driver was loaded (at least the wireless icon was showing). I was able to find the wireless routers around me but was unable to connect (I suppose this is an access method issue). Turned off wifi and everything worked fine, no hangs. Several minutes later I turned wifi back on, networks detected but unable to access them.

3.2 From Lion, version 4.1 (412.2)

Same as before, system started without issues and the wireless networks were detected but unable to connect. I can turn off and on wifi without issues or hangs.

Conclusion: none. Sadly, without a working wifi connection I cannot reach any conclusion because the hardware is not really working. Making the driver load and detecting the networks is just part of the expected behaviour. I do not have access to Mountain Lion drivers/kext (and it’s supposed to be at least 2 of them since there was an update around 10.8.5) so I was not able to test it.

AlfaMikeDelta wrote:

Hi all!

Just for the sake of discarding things and following the thread of a bug in the driver and after reading about bugs in past versions of wireless drivers in OS X, I decided to test a couple of those (old) drivers in Mavericks to check what happens if I switch drivers so I installed a clean copy of Mavericks and made some tests:

Conclusion: none. Sadly, without a working wifi connection I cannot reach any conclusion

Well, that certainly helps. Thank you.

Pete