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

I have the same MBP 3,1 problem as the others. I've never posted on apple forums but this time I feel like I must back the group in saying this is an unresolved driver issue which continues in OSX 9.2 and is not resolved until replacing the driver with the one from OSX 8.4.

There is really no reason for them to drop support when they initially supported the machine for OSX 9 and the hardware has changed so little - they still update this family driver. Some newer chip caused changes that broke the older chip support.

When's an Apple dev going to pull up their source tree or don't they keep them that far back? Given the security issues with Wifi drivers you'd think they might be concerned about problems like this which may not crash the newer chip but could indicate problems which crash an older gen chip but may run in a flawed way on the newer chip that hasn't manifested itself yet.

This topic and thread helps me know that I'm not crazy! My

MacBookPro3,1, a dual core 2.4ghz machine intermittently freezes up while running Mavericks 10.9.2.

I tried all the following with no success:

RAM tests with TechTool Pro

hard drive tests and smart report with TechTool Pro

Reinstall of Mavericks and updating to 10.9.2 from the recovery partition

freeing up hard drive space

turning off Spotlight on the hard drive

When I checked my console system reports and googled some the results at the moment of freezing I ended up reading this thread.

YAY! when I turn the wifi off the laptop WILL freeze after an intermittent time and/or after an intermittent number of boots.

I'm NOT crazy and the laptop may be OK.

I'm not sure exactly how the problem goes away but it may be due to my turning the wifi on/off/on sometime during a boot.

If the freezing returns I will try the terminal editing mentioned elswhere in this thread.

Thanks to all who are taking this seriously and posting their attempts to fix and for accurately describing the problem.

Apple Software support people, are you reading any of this??

I'm getting the same problem on a 2009 Mac Pro.

First time it happened I was eventually forced into doing a complete reinstall which was a real hassle.

Having now found this thread I'll give Sergio Huarcaya's tip from page 1 a go.

Will let you know how I get on.

My MBP 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo kept freezing when using the internet in Mavericks 10.9.3. Here's my original posting:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5524094?start=15&tstart=0

Replaced wifi card, Eventually did clean install of Mavericks and did many of the techniques used here and still problems with wifi freezing my MBP. Saw iCloud was active with Safari and iPhoto so turned off those preferences and amazingly now everything works. I can even turn wifi on and off without a problem - no overheating and no fans blasting. Really happy so hope this solution might work for others.

For 2 months now my MacBookPro3,1, a dual core 2.4ghz machine has worked without freezing and (mostly) without overheating. Not turning WiFi On/OFF seems to greatly improve my workday!

I read johnflann's technique of turning off iCloud for Safari and iPhoto to cure the problem.

For my purposes I'll leave WiFi alone because I use the iCloud connection to both those applications, Safiari and iPhoto, daily.

I am not going to mess with this problem, I'm going to just use the MacBook with the WiFi on all the time.

I'm really glad this thread exists!

How did you get Snow Leopard installed? My disks are not booting either in my MBP5,1.

Thanks!

I spoke too soon. After never turning off wifi other than when I tested it to see if it would crash, I assumed it was now fixed with the OS update. It only worked that initial time when I was trying to crash it. Now it crashes just like before and again won't come back unless I trash the prefs file.

In 10.9.3, I wasn't able to do the hack where I put in the 10.8 drivers - the OS now rejects this old driver so no wifi shows up.

I suppose the only solution now is to stay at 10.9.2 with the 10.8 driver, apple to fix it, or to trash the driver (IO80211Family.kext) and find some Express34 wifi card to put into it. I just spent a while looking at airport cards and from the look of it this one is used on many models with the next one being incompatible... so this bug should be screwing up other mac books and a few iMacs. I've done OS reinstall, cache cleaning, permissions, fsck, ram check, etc. all of it before.

Anybody have any solutions? is there a compatible miniPCI card that could work in place of the airport one? (long shot) I suppose I'm going to have to figure out where the .nib file is for the wifi menu and just kill the item for on/off... so I don't accidentally pick it again... or figure out how to run defaults early enough at boot time...

I have the same problem, seemingly exactly, as described by Ira. I've got a MacBookPro3,1, a 17-incher from 2007, now running OS X 10.9.4, and it freezes within a few minutes of disabling WiFi. It took me a while to isolate the cause, so at least 3 times I erased my hard drive and reinstalled the OS with Disk Utility. The final time, the only thing I did after a clean install was turn off WiFi, and the computer froze within a few seconds. I found this discussion thread on my iPad, and followed Ira's instructions from Dec 17, 2013. I'm now typing this on my laptop a few minutes later. Thanks, Ira!

As an aside, after the first freeze, I figured my computer was just dying because it's 7 years old. I took it to a local repair shop and indeed they told me my hard drive had failed and needed to be replaced. So they took out the original disk and put in a new one, and the computer worked again. But I took it home and a few hours later it died exactly as before (and at that point I still hadn't figured out why). I'm not too upset about the misdiagnosis (I now assume) from the repair shop because at least the new hard drive is faster/bigger than the old one. Definitely money I didn't want to spend, though.

Hi, Ira. Thank you for your persistence in following this issue.

It's the end of Aug 2014 and my MBP late 2007 running 10.9.4 still has the issue you describe.

I just did a test and turned wifi off again, got the freeze.

But this time, for the first time, I rebooted in safe mode (holding down the "s" key) and

my MBP rebooted OK with Wifi back on when it came up.

I don't know if this is unique to 10.9.4 or what, because I had to reinstall the OS when it happened in earlier versions of 10.9.

Any news on when Apple is going to fix this???

pvmikev1

I just wrote some code to monitor the status of WiFi (using launchd), and automatically turn it back on if it ever goes off. I've only tested it on my laptop, a late 2007 MacBook Pro 17" running OS X 10.9.4, but it works for me. It acts quickly enough that the computer doesn't get a chance to freeze. I put the code on GitHub along with instructions for installing:

https://github.com/dmuenz/KeepWiFiOn

This doesn't fix the underlying problem, but it should stop your computer from freezing. If you try it out, please let me know if you find any problems.

I'm not that familiar with command line, so I couldn't figure out how to edit or delete the wi-fi adapter plist in single-user mode according to Ira Wolf's instructions. I couldn't gain admin privileges in SUM and kept getting access denied. I'm sure it was some simple log in procedure, but I still couldn't find it.

Fortunately I came up with another way to get the wi-fi adapter turned back on and it even creates a backdoor if it's ever accidentally turned off. I didn't see it listed anywhere online as a band-aid solution for this software issue so I figured I'd list it here.

Essentialyl you use single user mode to force OSX into thinking that the initial admin account setup hasn't been done and you create an additional admin account. It doesn't modify or erase any of your old files, but creates a another admin account that automatically turns wifi back on, then all you have to do is log-out of the new one and log-in to your old account. The wifi is turned back on and you're right where you left off before. YAY!!!

1. Boot into single user mode (command-option-s).
2. Make volume read-write... /sbin/mount -uw /mount -uw /
3. Remove the file that tells the OS that one-time setup has been done... rm /var/db/.applesetupdone
4. type reboot
5. go through the setup to create a new admin account. you don't have to enter in too much info, but make sure you log into wifi
6. log out of your new account and log into you old one.
7. keep on truckin'

Three OSXs and you still have an issue that hardly anybody else has? Seems the problem does not exist with the software.Most likely the hardware or some rather awfully written third party software that is continually disrupting your WiFi. If WiFi was seriously an issue within the software OSXs then don't you think that Apple users (Many, many millions of them world wide) would have been screaming a couple of years ago? Take it in for a check up or maybe sell it and swap to Widows and just hope that their software works on your old machine. Yes, I believe you have a problem, but I also believe that you are looking the wrong ways to fix it over the past 12 months

Also, I do not see what you are seeing with the fonts.

Good Luck

Pete

I had this problem and finally decided to downgrade to 10.8.4 and I haven't had a problem since.

Question, though. Has anyone upgraded who had this problem upgraded to Yosemite (10.10)?? If so, did Apple fix the problem in Yosemite?

(I'm debating whether or not to upgrade to Yosemite. This was a major headache for me - it would freeze instantly if there was no wifi.)

Thanks!

Bill