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Ira Wolf 81 Author

Level 1

54 points

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

Turning off Wi-Fi in Mavericks is causing some older (and not-so-old) Mac’s to freeze almost instantly and then again during boot, repeatedly. I’m not sure why 10.9 (build 13A603) is freezing when wi-fi is disabled, but another (really bad) defect is freezing Mavericks at boot during the initialization of the wi-fi ethernet adapter (usually interface en1) when it is disabled.

You cannot fix this problem with Safe Boot, Repair Permissions, Repair Disk, re-install Mavericks, restore from Time Machine backup, reset the SMC, reset PRAM, or boot into single-user mode. Thus far, the only solution is to boot from a (homemade) Install OS X Mavericks USB, erase the hard drive, perform a clean Mavericks install, re-install your applications, and manually restore your data. And if you innocently turn off wi-fi again, you will have to repeat this procedure. However, I have worked out an alternative solution…

The work-around is to manually enable the wi-fi Ethernet adapter in the system configuration. Specifically, the PowerEnabled setting in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist needs to be changed from ‘false’ to ‘true’:

<key>Interface</key>

<dict>

<dict>

<key>AirPort</key>

<dict>

<key>JoinModeFallback</key>

<array>

<string>DoNothing</string>

</array>

<key>PowerEnabled</key>

<key>RememberJoinedNetworks</key>

<true/>

<key>RequireAdminIBSS</key>

<key>RequireAdminNetworkChange</key>

<key>RequireAdminPowerToggle</key>

</dict>

This change, however, is not straightforward. In short, you need to boot from the Install OS X Mavericks USB, and edit this file in the primary volume (e.g. /Volumes/MacBook Pro HD.) You cannot perform this edit in single-user mode because it boots from primary volume, which is read-only in this case. (Perhaps the primary volume is read-write if you boot from the Recovery HD volume, but I have not tried that yet.) Once you’ve booted, open the Terminal application from the Utilities pull-down menu and change directory to /Volumes/<primary volume>/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration. Make a backup copy of preferences.plist, and use vi or emacs (under /Volumes/<primary volume>/usr/bin) to make the required edit. Repair Permissions afterwards to be safe and reboot normally.

I was ready to buy a new MacBook Pro during the upcoming Black Friday sales, but I am happy to leave wi-fi on until Apple fixes this #$@&*! issue and save $2500.

Questions, comments and criticism are welcomed.

Regards,

Ira

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9), 2007 15" Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz

Posted on Nov 26, 2013 6:50 AM

98 replies

Dec 20, 2013 1:35 PM in response to petermac87

petermac87 wrote:

Well, that certainly helps. Thank you.

Pete

You are welcome... Do you have a MacBookPro 3,1? Do you have backups where you can find older drivers? Maybe pre-10.8.5?

petermac87

Level 5

7,447 points

Dec 20, 2013 1:44 PM in response to AlfaMikeDelta

AlfaMikeDelta wrote:

Do you have a MacBookPro 3,1? Do you have backups where you can find older drivers? Maybe pre-10.8.5?

I do, actually, but I gave it to my grandkids to play games on. A soon to be eight year old piece of Hardware is not of much use to me, other than for that purpose. Next time I am over there I will have a look.

Cheers

Pete

Dec 20, 2013 2:52 PM in response to petermac87

petermac87 wrote:

I do, actually...

Uh! Great! Any chances it has 10.8.x installed on it? Someone reported that the issue appears to start in 10.8.5.

petermac87 wrote:

A soon to be eight year old piece of Hardware is not of much use to me, other than for that purpose.

Sure, in fact as someone told, these are vintage machines, (almost) out of support so we can be grateful that Apple had included them into the compatibility list. To be sincere I agree with someone that said it was a "mistake". Nevertheless, this is more a curiosity than a critical issue, I can still take advantage of Mavericks as long as I don't turn off wifi.

Hope yo can check your machine soon. Thanks in advance!

petermac87

Level 5

7,447 points

Dec 20, 2013 2:56 PM in response to AlfaMikeDelta

No, I have Snow Leopard on that old dinosaur. Best OSX to run on them, given their old hardware, restricted memory, etc. I certainly wouldn't try to push it with Mountain Lion.

Cheers

Pete

Ira Wolf 81 Author

Level 1

54 points

Dec 20, 2013 9:01 PM in response to petermac87

Hello PeterMac97,

I was ready to ditch my 2007 MBP and get a new one during Black Friday, but I figured out a work-around to the wi-fi issue a few days before then and chose to save my money. Maybe most others who encountered the same problem (along with the general Mavericks slow-down issues due to unneeded crap being run) chose to purchase new MacBooks. Given that time equals money, and the amount of time I put into this issue, it would've been financially wiser for me to have purchased a new MPB, but I'm a tenacious software engineer who will never yield to a computer problem.

Additionally, the few of us discussing this issue on this thread represent a statistical sample of those who encountered the same issue. In other words, it's statistically probable that there are many more owners of older MacBooks dealing with the same issue.

Regards,

Ira

petermac87

Level 5

7,447 points

Dec 20, 2013 9:18 PM in response to Ira Wolf 81

Anything is statistically probable. My 3,1 will remain a toy while my five later Mavericks machines continue to be the workhorses of my business.

Cheers

Pete

Dec 21, 2013 2:05 AM in response to Ira Wolf 81

Hi everyone!

I have news! The idea of a bug in the wireless driver appears not to be wrong...

I've got the wireless driver from Mountain Lion (10.8.4), Apple updated it on 10.8.4 and 10.8.5.

Following my previous post:

3.3 From Mountain Lion, version 5.3 (530.4, from 10.8.4)

System started without issues, WiFi WORKS! can detect networks, connect to them, browse AND turn off and on without issues. Tested several times with off periods between 5 to 15 minutes and everything was normal.

Conclusion: Driver 6.0 (600.34, from 10.9) appears to be faulty. This is a preliminary conclusion but I'm confident that this would be replicable on your systems. Additionally, I will start to test the sleep function... To be honest, I've already tested it a couple of times and the computer sleeps and resumes normally but with short sleep periods (from 5 to 10 minutes) but to conclude something I will have to be more strict with the procedure, specially considering the public that is reading this thread. 😉

I still have to get the driver from 10.8.5 to see if it is true that the issue was introduced with that update.

Cheers!

AMD

PS: You can get 10.8.4 driver from the corresponding combo update: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1659

Ira Wolf 81 Author

Level 1

54 points

Dec 21, 2013 5:24 AM in response to AlfaMikeDelta

Hi AlphaMikeDelta,

Thanks for continuing your work on this issue. I did some more research and found a related thread on fixing wi-fi performance issues with our older laptops beginning at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4154491?answerId=22170424022#22170424022. Be sure to read the full thread; it discusses some negative effects of replacing IO80211Family.kext that include time machine / security issues, which appear to have been resolved with 10.9.

Could you please list the steps you did to extract and apply the 10.8.4 wireless driver?

Thanks,

Ira

Dec 23, 2013 7:18 AM in response to Ira Wolf 81

Hi Ira!

Thanks for the link! That was quite interesting, in fact I've found that my test #3.1 and #3.2 were working but only with open networks.

Recalling what I've read, the following side effects could appear when you change to Mountain Lion's (10.8.x) driver:

1) Speed drops on 802.11n networks (both 2.4GHz & 5GHz)

2) Speed drops with large file transfers

3) Speed drops with Time Machine backups to Time Capsules

4) Airplay issues

Replacing with a pre ML version (10.6.x or 10.7.x) works but you also have to replace airportd file (I've not tested this) and you will have an issue with 802.1x authentication.

While I was testing this, I used a 802.11n router in the 2.4GHz band and I've not noticed any speed drops. I do not have any 5GHz router so I will not be able to test that.

Regarding 2), I will have to test that. I do not have any way to test 3) or 4).

About extracting driver from 10.8.4, do the following:

- After downloading the update, you will have a .dmg file with a .pkg file inside.

- Copy the .pkg to your hard drive (lets assume you copied it to ~/test)

- Open Terminal and go to the folder where you copied the pkg

- Unpack the file (I think this tool comes with Xcode):

pkgutil --expand ~/test/[your pkg].pkg ~/test/unpacked

- Now, you will have a folder named unpacked with a couple of files inside, the important file for us is "OSXUpdCombo10.8.4.pkg"

- Go to a Finder window, ctrl-click (or right click) "OSXUpdCombo10.8.4.pkg" and select "Show Package Contents"

- Now, you are inside the file, look for the one named Payload, copy and paste it outside, preferably in its own folder (i.e. in ~/test/payload). This file is a tar.gz compressed file.

- Go back to terminal, "cd payload" and run:

tar -xzvf ./Payload System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext

- After tar finishes unpacking, you will find IO80211Family.kext inside ~/test/payload/System/Library/Extensions/

Cheers

AMD

Dec 23, 2013 8:56 AM in response to Ira Wolf 81

I forgot to mention...

The instructions to install a kext are here:

http://osxdaily.com/2012/01/12/how-to-manually-install-kernel-extensions-in-mac- os-x/

Dec 24, 2013 5:45 AM in response to Ira Wolf 81

Hi everyone!

Yesterday I made two experiments to test the sleep mode issue with the wireless driver from 10.8.4.

- With original driver 10.9.0:

After 3 hours of sleeps and wake ups, the system froze after a 45 minutes sleep.

- With 10.8.4 driver:

After 6 hours of sleeps and wake ups, with different periods of sleep ranging from 5 minutes to 1.5 hours, there were no freezes.

I'm pretty sure the issues are related but this one needs more testing perhaps in a production system with daily usage.

May be next year... 😉

Merry Christmas and happy new year!

AMD

Ira Wolf 81 Author

Level 1

54 points

Dec 24, 2013 3:48 PM in response to AlfaMikeDelta

Thanks for the info AlphaMikeDelta!

Have you use the Wireless Diagnostic utility yet? I've learned about it from https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5556028?answerId=24229732022#24229732022. The summary report captures much information. I'll later try turning on the monitoring feature and then disable Wi-Fi to see if anything useful is captured.

Regards,

Ira

Jan 4, 2014 9:00 AM in response to Ira Wolf 81

I am having same issue with my MBP 2007 after upgrading to 10.9. Its keeps rebooting during the startup. One time it was able to boot successfully, and I checked the preferences.plist file. I see that PowerEnabled is already set to true.

<key>PowerEnabled</key>

<true/>

I still cannot successfully start my MBP. When booting in safe mode, I see that it restarts after following -

AirPort: RSN handshake complete on en1

flow_divert_kctl_disconnect disconnecting group 1

Ira Wolf 81 Author

Level 1

54 points

Jan 4, 2014 10:10 AM in response to steele385

Hello steele385,

If you can boot into Safe Mode, your issue seems different than the one discussed in this thread.

Did you try booting from the Recovery HD and running Repair Permissions from Disk Utility? The following KB is a bit dated but it still can guide you through the basic steps for dealing with boot issues:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Please let us know if any of those steps helped.

Regards,

Ira

Jan 6, 2014 4:13 PM in response to AlfaMikeDelta

Hi and thank you so much AlfaMikeDelta and Ira Wolf 81.

I also want to say I have -- had !!! -- this problem. I'm lucky, I was able to boot normally and activate wifi within 10 seconds (the time it usually took to freeze). So far so good. I will report back if it freezes again. For the last weeks, I had to rely on my 10.6 backup system on an usb external drive to continue to work. So it is definetely a software problem as I did not have any problem on that backup system.

As for the heat/fan problem with sleep mode, someone in another thread suggested desactivating ipv6 : https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5474520?answerId=23696579022#23696579022

As I'm only back on 10.9 since an hour and did not let it sleep, I cannot tell about the effectiveness.

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