OSX Yosemite Wifi issues

Warszawa wrote:

You could be surprised about Apple's ability to correct their own program errors or eliminate bugs. The question is; do they want to? After fixing my WiFi problem I'm not sure if Apple is willing to rewrite some of the Yosemite program WiFi protocol. I guess with this "World most advanced" Yosemite operating system some things were pushed forward to the point that older network equipment (modem/router) can't process as before. I have tried all of the suggested fixes and nothing worked. I didn't want to revert to Maverick because it is unapproved process and a little to complicated to perform without any reservations. At the end I have decided to throw my money on it and purchased a new Air Port Extreme router. Apple for some reason abounded my 3.5 years old Air Port Extreme which was no longer eligible for a software update and possibly for that reason didn't want to fully cooperate with Yosemite. The new router has no issues handling the new OSX. I'm doing more testing but looks that in my case the problem is fixed. Well, until next major update or upgrade.

Thats interesting. To begin with I thought that perhaps my 8 Year old Airport Extreme was to blame.. Which it was, to a certain extend. However, after I reset it to factory default with 10.10 and reconfigured it with 10.10 - I have not had a drop for more than 5 days. I had a lot of sleeps and and reboots etc. But not once did I experience the 'other' stuff. Resetting the AE to Factory Defaults has been the single most effective thing I did to troubleshoot this.

Glad to hear that you are up and running, sad to hear that you had to purchase a new AE to get there !

Well, I did a hard rest of my old router which it didn't help. I'll try next to perform a factory default reset and attempt to extend my current working network. The new router is upstairs and the old one I'll place downstairs. Hopefully it will work. So, I don't consider $200 purchase as an unnecessary. Thanks for all your involvement and help on this forum. Wish you all the luck and take care.

Chris K

Warszawa wrote:

Well, I did a hard rest of my old router which it didn't help. I'll try next to perform a factory default reset and attempt to extend my current working network. The new router is upstairs and the old one I'll place downstairs. Hopefully it will work. So, I don't consider $200 purchase as an unnecessary. Thanks for all your involvement and help on this forum. Wish you all the luck and take care.

Chris K

Hey Chris,

by hard reset, I take that you mean the little reset button ?

I tried that too with no use. Only thing that made the huge change was selecting the base station in Airport Utility and hitting 'Restore Default Settings' from the Base Station Menu. Then after that, set it up cleanly as in no loading of old settings. But creating a 5GHZ WLAN from scratch...

Would interest me if that would do it for you too. But I can understand that after all your hassle, if you wanna work and don't test no further ;-)

I do not have a restore to factory setting option in my Air Port Utility. Could be because the newer router. You have three types of resets available in recent Air Port Extremes;

- soft reset which is powering of the unit down and up

- hard reset which is pushing a small micro switch button in the back until an amber light starts a fast pulse

- default factory setting reset by disconnecting power source and reconnecting while holding the micro switch button until the amber light fast flashes/pulse.

In my case I did the second option and decided to not to do the option three without a new router. The new router one is lightning fast. I'll use the old Air Port Extreme after exercising the third option as a network extension on the first floor of my house.

I found a way to fix the wifi issue on my iMac which i upgraded from maverick to Yosemite OSX. I got fed up with all the fixes that didn't fix the problem so I opened app store and re-downloaded Mavericks.. I noticed that for two hours my wifi didn't drop once. then immediately after download it disconnected...... So after a thought, i opened my torrent program and let 1 file seed at .2K and magically no wifi issue as long as something is always using the signal....

There are definite bugs in Yosemite that need to be addressed by Apple. Multiple people are experiencing Wifi issues with fresh installs of Yosemite.

I was experiencing consistent Wifi issues after a fresh install of Yosemite. I validated that it wasn't my computer or router by doing a fresh re-install of Mavericks. Wifi works flawlessly under Mavericks but always fails under Yosemite. No other software was installed as part of this test.

Here is my configuration:

Model Name: MacBook Pro

Model Identifier: MacBookPro8,1

Processor Name: Intel Core i5

Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz

Number of Processors: 1

Total Number of Cores: 2

L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

L3 Cache: 3 MB

Memory: 10 GB

Boot ROM Version: MBP81.0047.B27

SMC Version (system): 1.68f99

Serial Number (system): C2QGV006DVHJ

Hardware UUID: XXXXX

Sudden Motion Sensor:

State: Enabled

I just completed the Keychain Access steps and it seems to be working so far. Prior to completing these steps I was simply turning wifi off then turning it back on - this would work for anywhere from 5 mins to several hours. Hoping the new OS update fixes it permanently. Totes lame!

The only sure fix so far is the one suggested by Morten James Carlsen. He was so nice and shared his results with rest of us. This is what I did; purchased a new Air Port Extreme as my main router and used the old one as a network extension after restoring it back to factory setting. This set up ended up the two weeks hopeless attempts to fix randomly dropping WiFi signal after installing Yosemite. So, for all you guys instead of waiting for Apple, which could be a long wait before they find a way to address this network bug, restore your routers back to original factory setting and set it up from the scratch with a new network name, pass codes etc. It should work much better then all the fixes suggested on this forum. I did try them all. Good luck.

Warszawa wrote:

The only sure fix so far is the one suggested by Morten James Carlsen.

The fix I posted proves to be just as temporary as the rest of them... Unfortunately ;-)

I spent the better half of my Sunday, trouble shooting after the Mac slept overnight. It took me 4 hours to rectify. Even resetting AE to Factory defaults did not do the trick... This has got to be the most devious issue I have ever had to troubleshoot...

I did fix, however but none of the usual suspects did the trick....

I am suspecting Spotlight and Sandbox to be possible culprits... I was closely watching the console while all this was going on. And as I was uploading up a bug report to Apple I needed Spotlight (Which I don't use very often) I entered the search string and and immediately the console filled up with mdworker and sandboxd errors and the network connection dropped...

Over the years I have been using various 'extremities' to get my computer to work. Among others, unloading various daemons. Such spotlight, quicklooksatelite, sandbox etc...

I have Apple scripts doing those for so I don't have to enter the terminal all the time...

As the network connection dropped I ran

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

The network connection immediately came back.. after hitting refresh in the browser... So I reloaded it with

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

4 minutes or so later, the network connection dropped. And the console again would fill up with mdworker and sandboxd errors... So I repeated the unload.

Network connection came back again, immediately. This time I did NOT reload. And the connection did not drop for hours. But with that daemon unloaded, spotlight WONT work...

The only thing I could think of that I had not tried and that would have been a Mavericks-relic was the spotlight indexes I had... So I ran a spotlight reload followed by a

sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/*

in the Terminal which would erase and re-index all my drives...

I also disabled ALL Spotlight phone home features from System Preferences... and Safari Preferences...

Since this, I have been running smoothly again...

I have reported the issue..

I fear this is another temporary fix.... And what beats me the most is that I aint sure whether all this is a coincidence or a fix....

Anyway, if any of you aren't scared of doing the unload and load of spotlight which I posted above once the network error occurs, it would be quite interesting to see whether it would fix it for you as well....

Well, that is exactly why I have purchased a brand new router with the most recent software to run it. James, if I'm not mistaking you mentioned that your router is over 9 years old, correct? You know, routers do age a little quicker than other electronics because a transmitter/receiver over time looses radio signal strength, especially on the transmitter side. Also, at one point manufactures stop supporting it by not releasing software updates. Apple stopped supporting mine 3.5 years old Air Port Extreme soonest they released a new model. On the top of everything else the Yosemite has some advanced network futures which are not processed or handled well by old routers. I'm not sure what is a return policy in Germany (isn't that where you are currently reside?) but in US I can bring my new router back to the Best Buy store by January,15, 2015 because of a traditional holiday return extension. I'm suggesting to get yourself an early Christmas present in a form of a shiny new Air Port Extreme or other good quality brand and give it a try. You are well overdue for a new router anyway. If it doesn't fix the problem than take it back for a refund.

Yes, residing in Germany....

Actually, thinking about it while reading your mail, I just might go and get myself a new one. See if that will ease the pain...

But, the current router works perfectly with any other device I have, be that iP 6 Plus or anything else..

And WHEN working in 10.10 it is great. At least AFA I can tell..

I don't really think that the router is the deal but if it is, heck, I'll gladly spend the cash to achieve equilibrium !

There you have it, Morten James. Though I don't post much here and am still running Snow, Lion and Mavericks on my various Macs, I do read along, avidly reconnoitering.

It seems all users affected by this Yosemite bug have not used a clean install or have migrated old stuff. Just one question: have you migrated mdworker or Spotlight itself from a Mavericks system? Or does it come with the new OSX.10.0?

Have any of those affected here started a new Spotlight/ Time Machine index session at all?

Another, maybe related remark: seeing Yo1010 is using only signed/verified kexts, does mdworker or any spotlight component need a proptietary .kext at all?

If so, migrating an unsigned/ unverified mdworker/ Spotlight .kext will surely get you into trouble under Yosemite.

Just a hunch, though...

Hi -

1) I did a clean install of 10.10 - thus migrating nothing (Aside from manually copying over my data)

2) My Disks (External) had Spotlight Indexes created by Mavericks (Not sure if Yosemite overwrites them completely when installed) - Those I was deleting and re-indexing..

3) mdworker IS spotlight.. Or sort of - it is the meta data worker which does all the indexing etc. for Spotlight. They come with OS X, regardless of version. And will never be migrated AFAIK

4) I don't have any idea about the .kext stuff. Perhaps some of the savvy ones could chime in here...

Followup: please open Terminal and enter a "kextstat" command. I'm particularly interested in the com.apple.kpi.libkern version #, yes your library kernel. I'm not very knowledgeable here, but still, this might be something. Comparing library kernel # of Yosemite users with and without the network issues described in this thread. Thank you!

I'm just joining to note that I have five Macs in my house (a 1 week old MB Air 11", a 6mos old iMac, a 1yr old MB Pro 13, a 2yr old MB Pro 13, and a 5yr old MB 15). I also have a relatively new 20Gb Fiber Optic Internet connection, and a brand new Apple Airport Extreme. So you'd think that bandwidth and routers and what not are not going to the source of my concerns. And these problems occur whether one computer is on at home or all of them are (no difference).

All the computers are running Yosemite, all needed to be updated from Mavericks (even the new one, believe it or not!) and I did not do a clean install on any. All but the newest ones suffer from strange disconnections and freezes since upgrading to Yosemite (Internet connections are insufferably slow, periodically). The oldest one, the MB Pro 15, has the worst of it: if it goes to sleep and we wake it back up, the wifi connectivity is lost. I always have to reboot the computer, otherwise it's not able to send email, can't print to networked printer, etc. On this computer, when I click on the antenna icon, the wifi signal is full strength, but I can see the greyed out text where it should say "Wi-Fi: On" it actually continuously flicks between "Wi-Fi: On" and "Wif-Fi: Looking for Network" (it may be "Wi-Fi: Disconnected," one of the two).

Summary: five computers, one with no obvious probs, three with terribly slow Internet, and one that only works before going to sleep, and requires a restart if it does, in order for wifi connectivity to function. I maintain all the computers exactly the same way, same software and credentials on each one. With all of that sameness, the variation in performance is astounding to me. I realized today that I was dealing with a clunky, slow system and for the first time since I switched to Macs (from Windows 95) I realized I was dealing with something that was really quite buggy and, sad to say, a bit clunky and hard to manage. Certainly not the silky smooth Mac OS experience Ive been used to.