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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

mark1026

Level 1

0 points

Mar 16, 2015 7:26 AM in response to BillHooper

Hello Bill, I have a mid 2007 MBP on 10.10.2 and the problem still exists.

Mar 16, 2015 7:28 AM in response to mark1026

Thanks, Mark, for letting me know. I appreciate it. I guess I won't be upgrading on this laptop then.

Best

Bill

mark1026

Level 1

0 points

Mar 16, 2015 8:21 AM in response to BillHooper

You can update to Yosemite (though I too hate the fonts) as long as you understand the do's and don'ts of this issue. If you understand how to boot into, and use single user mode, then Ira's advise is awesome. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5603415

Follow all his advice especially unchecking "show wi-fi status in menu" through the Applications/System Preferences App/uncheck show Wi-Fi status in menu option so it cannot be easily turned off in the future as well as setting the service order to have ethernet on top in the Applications/System Preferences App/Network/set service order settings.

There is also a script that has been created and can be found in this thread for keeping the wi-fi on, but I did not test that.

I back-up to an external bootable drive I created using SuperDuper. If I toggle my wi-fi to test an OS update, and I freeze-up, I simply boot to the external bootable back-up and navigate using finder to the MBP internal drive's Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/Preferences.Plist and open that file in a text editor like Textwrangler. I Make the edit Ira describes and save the change. You will be asked for your password since this is a protected file. Then, I reboot to the internal drive. It's not as elegant - or fast as Ira's method, but at least I know what I am doing.

Really pretty easy, especially after having done it many times, and makes being able to get any benefits you may want from Yosemite possible.

As a side note: this issue happens on fresh installs with stock hardware and upgraded hardware. I have gone through the trouble to check it myself. But man-o-man, I put a ssd in the main bay, and a spinning drive in the optical drive and and this machine is in no way ready for retirement. The ssd changed everything!

Mar 16, 2015 9:49 AM in response to mark1026

Thanks. I'm gonna stick with 10.8.4 for now. This stuff is more involved than I want to do.

But I appreciate the help.

Bill

notfol

Level 1

8 points

Dec 18, 2015 2:19 PM in response to BillHooper

You all won't believe this. This is still happening (to me in El Capitan). I have the same mid 2007 early 2008 Macbook Pro 17" hardware. Considering this post has been going on since 2013 with no solution from Apple, we can see where this company is headed. I'm surely going to start campaigning against them. This is outrageous that this is still not fixed.

fishdrop

Level 1

4 points

Jul 28, 2016 2:17 PM in response to notfol

oh i am definitely believing you. i installed 10.11.6 today. i am coming from 10.6.8. my mac book pro 3.1 crashes, too when wifi is disabled. i am aware of the fact that my mac is 8 years old. but if a mac is on the compatibility list for el capitan, it should be up and running no matter how old it is. 😟

andy_nc

Level 1

4 points

Aug 24, 2016 8:29 PM in response to fishdrop

So this is my status-quo:

I was happy with 10.8.4 until Opera, Mozilla and Google have announced discontinuing support of their browsers for Mac OS X 10.8. Now I was really forced to get in touch with Apple.

So I've had Apple Germany call me yesterday and after a while of extensive explaining of my issue:

– up until OS X 10.8.4 there is NO FREEZE on AirPort-OFF
– from 10.8.5 and every OS X version later – Macbook Pro 15" 3,1 (mid 2007) freezes after turning off the Wi-Fi;

they told me that from OS X 10.8.5 and later, there is a different addressing and diagnostics of the AirPort module by the software and in that in my case the AirPort module (the hardware) must have an issue and needs to be replaced.
Apparently, all the versions up to 10.8.4 would ignore the supposedly hardware issue… I don't know.

But since Apple has discontinued the support for these models, they can not deliver a replacement AirPort module either.
So, the last option I guess – to seek for the module elsewhere.

Cheers!