Mac OS X 10.5 Airport disabled in safe boot

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Level 1

4 points

Mac OS X 10.5 Airport disabled in safe boot

Hi all,

For some reason I cannot get wireless / Airport to work in safe boot on my MacBook Air.

I have read that this is normal and that wireless drivers are disabled in safe boot by default which I find crazy as the chances are people will need internet access from safe boot to troubleshoot and fix issues. Which I do, I need to access a shared CD drive on my LAN but I cannot because I cannot connect to the wireless network. I do not have a physical USB to Ethernet convertor either.

So my question is, is there a way to enable wireless / airport whilst in safe boot? Or do I need to buy a USB to Ethernet convertor?

Thanks in advance.

Wayne

MacBook Air

Posted on Dec 26, 2015 9:16 AM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

82,941 points

Dec 29, 2015 4:32 PM in response to noddy_2121

So do you have the Airport menu not visible at all? If not, you can add it from Apple menu -> System preferences -> Network.

Then you can manually connect to the wireless network from the menubar.

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Answer 2

BDAqua

Level 10

239,213 points

Dec 29, 2015 5:08 PM in response to noddy_2121

You'll likely need an adapter, earlier versions of OSX did disable Wifi in Safe Mode.

I never tried it, but you might try this command in Terminal...

sudo kexxtload /System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleAirPortBrcm 4311.kext

Or whatever Wifi card driver you have.

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Answer 3

a brody

Level 10

82,941 points

Dec 30, 2015 8:18 AM in response to BDAqua

My bad. I thought since Apple was able to enable airport in Recovery mode it would have been no trouble at all in Safe mode to enable it. I just tested in Snow Leopard, and saw indeed it is disabled in Safe mode.

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Answer 4

BDAqua

Level 10

239,213 points

Dec 30, 2015 10:06 AM in response to a brody

Yeah, I don't know at what point it changed, but it is available in Safe Mode in some later version of OSX, as I recall.

Did you try kextload in Safe Mode by any chance?

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