Losing wireless connection intermittentl

sakopoo82

Registered
I have a 2008 MacBook running Mac OSX and it loses wireless internet connectivity on a continuous intermittent basis. I use a Linksys router and none of my wireless PC's are effected by any loss of connectivity when my Mac is, in fact, they do not lose connection to the internet at all. I am connected to my own secure network that is wep password protected. Any suggestions? Thank you.
 
WEP? You know WEP can be easily broken in a couple of minutes (look here for the video how-to).

Plus reset the Mac's Network settings. Open System Preferences->Network, Airport. Then turn off the Airport card. After that at the bottom of the lefthand column you will see a Minus (-) button. Use that to delete your Airport card. Quit System Preferences and restart. Then upon the restart open system Preferences->Network and then click the plus (+) button and re-add your Airport card and before putting any your data back in, click the 'Apply' button in the righthand pane. After that put in your wireless settings and rejoin your wireless network.

If this doesn't fix your problem then please report back. Also please post the version of OS X you are using!!!
 
Hello,

I have the same problem as the original poster. I have 2006 MacBook, 1.81 GHz Intel Core Duo, OS X version 10.4.11 ( outdated I know.. )

In my case, when I go to System Preference -> Network -> Airport, I don't see any (-) signs anywhere ( I have turned off my wireless card ). Can you please assist me with this issue. Or is it hardware "wear & tear " kinda thing?

At the moment I am using USB dongle to connect to my home wifi.

Thank You
 
First try the Reset Your PRAM to see if that helps. Then if it doesn't you will have to get geeky and fix the Airport drivers. Follow these steps to reset the Airport drivers:

1. Open System Preferences->Network pane and highlight the Airport card.
2. Then in the right hand pane disconnect the Airport card from any wireless connections.
3. Turn off the Airport card!
4. Navigate to the folder/YourHardDrive /Library/System Configuration/ and delete the preferences: com.apple.airport.agent.000a95b77e90.plist & com.apple.airport.agent.37C8FC8B-0990-516C-BBD4-E9AFB9680E04.plist. Note these are what I have in 10.6.5 so yours might be different. Just get all the say Airport in them.
5. Reboot Immediately!!!! This is import to rebuild these files.
6. Go back to System Preferences->Network and highlight the Airport card. Then rejoin your wireless network.
7. Hopefully this will reset the Airport card.

Now the non-geeky way are in these steps:

1. Open System Preferences->Network and high light the Airport card.
2. Turn off the Airport card!
3. In the left hand of the Network pane, at the and click on - button and delete the Airport card.
4. Don't panic at the previous step!
5. Quit System Preferences and IMMEDIATELY REBOOT!!!
6. Upon the restart go back into System Preferences->Network pane and click on the + button and re-add the Airport card! Then in the right hand of the pane click on the 'Apply' button to save your adding of the Airport card.
7. Then put in your wireless network settings and try to join your wireless network and make sure you save those settings.
8. Reboot again to make sure you saved everything for new settings, for future reboots.

Lastly try all the steps in the blog post How I fixed my dropping wireless Airport connection problem in Snow Leopard. If you tried all these steps and nothing happens then try a new wireless router and make a new test user account on your Mac. If the Aiport has problem in the test user account then you mostly likely have a hardware problem.
 
Have you tried changing the wireless channel? Some wireless phones (yours or a neighbors) interfere with wireless routers. Channels are 1-->11. Change at least 3-5 numbers away from what you currently are using.
 
Thank you very much guys!

Satcomer, your geeky solution worked to a degree. I can now connect to my wireless network, but the signal strength is about 50% less then it used to be, say 1 year ago.
The signal still drops to the very minimal level of connection after 10 mins of connection time tops. It will not go up unless I get <2 meters from the router itself.

Also, changing channels on my router did not work. I scanned my surroundings for other routers/wireless networks, and there are 5 total ( including mine ). Two of them use channel 7, one uses channel 9 and one uses channel 5, hence I stuck with my (default) channel 1.

I am afraid it might be a hardware issue ( although the lap top is 95% on the same position on a table, and hardly ever gets moved, let alone being dropped or anything ).
Is there a way for it to be tested, if it;s really a hardware issue?
Thank you
 
Well a quick test wold be to open System preferences->Network pane and at the top of the pane use the 'Location' drop-down And make a new custom location 9calling it what you want) and then reconnect to the wireless location. Sometimes this can help and the Custom Location acts just like the Automatic Location.

Also try to make a new test user to boot into that and see if has the same wireless problem. This way you can see if the problem is system wide.

One more thing. See if you can take this to another wireless location to see if it might be your wireless router. This way you can be absolutely sure if it is the wireless router or the Mac.
 
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