November 29, 2007
MacBook Wi-Fi issues are on and off
Posted Nov. 29, ’07, 8:06 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Troubleshooting
Most of the time my MacBook is pretty well-behaved; I like to think that’s because I’ve enforced a careful system of reward. If it performs as expected, it gets more RAM, software upgrades, and I’ll even clean off the hard drive off once in a while. If not, well, it gets sent to its room without dessert.
But this Wi-Fi flakiness that’s being reported has been troubling me for some time. Like many of the other sufferers I’ve been experiencing it since around 10.4.10 (see: I told you no good could come from those two digit upgrades). Even when connected to a perfectly stable access point that I can see clearly, the signal will fluctuate wildly. But until reading the second thread above, I didn’t notice that it seems largely tied to whether the MacBook is running off AC power or battery power. Interesting. I have no idea what it means, but, hey, one step closer to solving it, right?
I’ve heard tell of others with the same problem. How about you, readers? Any of you having trouble with your MacBook’s Wi-Fi signals?
[via Infinite Loop]
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I'm having the same problem with my Mac Mini. Seems like it's not only the MacBook... :-(
My MacBook didn't play nice with my school network that has WEP and an additional authentication step. My Airport Express network at home was fine. After I updated Leopard with the "keychain update", all the networks work fine and connect quickly.
I had the same issues with an Intel-Based Windows Laptop some years ago. It was then a bug in the WiFi-Driver Settings: There was a setting for the energy that is used to send signals. If on AC, there was no problem, it was automatic. For Battery it was set to "high". But due to a misconfiguration in the driver "high" acutally meant "low" and vice versa.
The problem told above is exactly the same as I have experienced it. But I can't find the place to look for a setting like I had in my driver back in my windows times...
I have this problem on my new 20" iMac. :-( Very frustrating.
10.4.10 works fine on my BlacBook. 10.4.11 and Leopard both have the repeating WiFi dropout problem, including a 100% virgin install of Lepoard and then its 10.5.1 update.
10.4.11 works fine on my G4 iMac PPC on the same network and booting my BlacBook from a 10.4.10 clone does too.
Clearly some core Intel system code is hosed in both cases.
I've got a HORRIBLE problem with my school's wifi.. It's WEP protected... I get dropped about every 20-30 seconds, and then get reconnected again in about 5 seconds.. (macbook)
Running Leopard... It's mindnumbing...
I had this exact problem on my 15 inch MacBook Pro when running 10.4.10. Since I upgraded to 10.4.11 it has now gone away. My computer is running so well with 10.4.11 I really don't want to move to Leopard right now.
I have tried reinstalled tiger and all sorts of other remedies and none make my wi-fi signal stable again with either apple or non-apple base stations.
I have the same problem that coincided with flashing my MacBook nic to the 802.11n and buying a Netgear 'N' ADSL router. I got fed up with the continued drop outs and eventually bought a Belkin 'N' ADSL router, which at firts seemed to fix the problem, however in the past few weeks has started up again. The only fix I currently have if to turn off the WiFi and switch back on, although this is becoming a pain.
having that same prob in leopard
Am getting better WIFI performance with Leopard. Still not perfect, but much more solid connections on my MacBook.
Yes. Was using a D-Link and it wouldn't play nice. Found more with D-Link/MBPro issues than not...so I switched to a $40 Belkin and no problems since.