Wireless Connection Problem

J

jjsanders281

Registered
Hi great Forum!

I just bought a 15" Powerbook. I took it to work and connected to our wireless lan no problem. (128 bit encryption on a Cisco 1200 Ap) That laptop Died after two days and i returned it and got a new one. The new laptop cannot see our network at all. Not even Mac Stumbler sees it. I tried manually entering the SSID and WEP but no dice. Im wondering if the replacement laptop has some older version of Airport card that is not compatible with the Cisco AP's. It works everywhere else but here at work. According to the system profiler, my current Wireless Card Firmware Version is 3.4.2b1 (3.50.37.p4)

There is no LEAP or RADIUS on the AP Just 128bit Encryption

Thanks in advance.
 
Welcome to the MacOSX.com community!

What system are you running and what are the specs on the PowerBook. Is it an airport or airport extreme card? Have you updated the drivers for Airport Extreme if an extreme card? There are quite a few software udpates out there if you haven't done an update.

Goodluck
 
Powerbook is a 15" | 1.33 Ghz with Airport extreme. I ran the system updater and tried manually downloading the lastest Airport drivers. Its just strange that the first Powerbook I had worked perfectly and this one cant see the network at all.
 
Have you created a "Location" for your Wireless transmitter on your laptop? You may need to reconfigure a new DHCP protocol for your laptop; name it "Wireless" in the Network list, or something recognizeable.

You might have your transmitter set to transmit the b standard only, possibly?
 
Yeah i tried making a new location. I dont know if the card is locked to B or not. I dont know how to check if it is. Even if it was it should work either way, the AP has both a B and a G radio.
 
****Update*****

Ok, so i go over a friends house and hook up to their wireless network. Its WEP enabled but I had the Key saved from being over there and connecting before. He has the same wireless router (linksys) that I do. I was able to get an IP address from his router but the internet would not connect thins time. It would just sit there loading for a long time and eventually fail. I started pinging the router and was getting 70% packet loss with a signal strength that was 3-4 rings on the Airport icon. I tried the same with his laptop and got 0% packet loss. So I took it in the other room and was standing right next to the router and was still getting 30% packet loss from pinging. I later took it home and connected to my home network and everything works perfectly.

This has me totally stumped. I think its a bad card but its hard to prove cause it only dosent work on certian networks for whatever reason.

Does anyone have any other sugesstions or comments? I really dont want to take it back to the store...again. those people are not the best to deal with.
 
I don't think something is wrong with your powerbook. Did you plug your book via an ethernet cable to the router? Just to test if it has anything to do with the wireless accesspoint or maybe just the router. Does he have any MAC-filter or other filter on?
 
Zammy-Sam said:
I don't think something is wrong with your powerbook. Did you plug your book via an ethernet cable to the router? Just to test if it has anything to do with the wireless accesspoint or maybe just the router. Does he have any MAC-filter or other filter on?
Click to expand...


It runs fine of the ethernet. There isnt any mac address filtering on the router, just Wep encryption.
 
I'm thinking your troubleshooting has probably hit on the right thing - 30% packet loss from right next to the router, when it works fine for everyone else. I'd definitely guess it's the laptop's card that's bad.

A shame the people at the store are a pain to deal with...
 
Well so far ive tried it with 9 AP's and 3 of them wont connect. 1 Linksys, 1 cisco 1200, 1 cisco 350. Im going to take it back to the store tonight (hour drive away) and have it out with them. Thanks for your suggesstions.
 
but somehow it doesn't make sense to me that there is something wrong with the airport card when it actually does work fine in your own network..:confused:
However, it will be insteresting to see, how a new airport card will work.
 
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