MacBook Air (2010) wireless stops working

Hello all,

As of this morning, my MacBook Air wireless stops working properly. I have not changed my wireless router (2.4Ghz 802.11n) nor the configuration for the last 6 months. All my other devices (Windows laptop, another MacBook Pro, Android Phone, etc.) still connected to the wireless router just fine.

My MBA exhibits the following:

- Wireless stops connecting to previously registered Access Point
- Connected to previously registered AP, but no IP address obtained
- Connected to previously registered AP, IP address obtained, slow or zero connection

I tried the following:

1). BACKUP and DELETE the following files:
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences.plist

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.network.identification.plist

2). DELETE ALL NETWORKS
Network -> Advanced -> Airport -> then select and delete (-) any from the "Preferred Networks".

3). DELETE ALL NETWORK PASSWORD from KeyChain

4). FIX PERMISSIONS and STARTUP DISK via Disk Utility

5). Run Onyx and execute maintenance script

6). REBOOT and re-add network

I also tested this with another router (Apple Airport) and same problem.

Does anyone experiences this with the MBA? Is this a bad wireless card in my MBA?

 

Have you run the apple hardware test? I would take it to apple if possible.

I was getting a unique problem in my MBP, where I would be connected to the internet but couldn't browse after 10 minutes as connections were timing out. Thankfully, the deletion of the files in system configuration folder fixed that problem for last 2 days.

 

Which files are these?

 

My wife's MBA 11 (1.4 GHz Core2Duo, 2GB RAM) started having very similar wireless problems last night. Our router doesn't have any problems connecting to a Windows laptop, a MacBook Pro 13", an iPad, or two WP7 phones.

I didn't take all the steps you did (very thorough, by the way), but I did repair permissions and run an FSCK at startup to no avail.

Out of curiosity, have you installed the 10.6.8 update yet? We tried to install this update on the Air last night, but we couldn't hold a wireless signal long enough to download it. Maybe a fix is in that download.

 

I haven't tried the 10.6.8 update yet since I finally did solved the problem.

For some reason, after performing the steps above, at the end, I have to TURN OFF the wireless in MBA, reboot, THEN turn on the wireless. Works without a hiccup so far.

 

Thanks for the update. I'll try these final steps tonight and hope for the best.

 

If you go under the main hard disk (not your home folder !!!), click on the "Library" icon and then click on the Preferences icon under there. There should be a system configuration folder in there. Make sure your airport is turned off before hand and then delete all the files to the recycle bin. You can also empty the program cache but that is for another time if deleting the said files didn't work.

Now, restart the computer right away and the OS X would regenerate the power plan, boot files along with the network file when your network connects to the router again. Fair warning that you would lose any settings that you had made with your router like entering a password to join the network again, but I guess that is intent behind it.

I figured out that I can't run Vuze on my uni network, so my airport runs fine, except I do have to turn it on and off sometimes to reconnect when I am downloading files. I have read that the software agent that many universities have you download tries to limit multiple connections so that might have been the problem with the "connection".

 

I had a similar problem. Solution was to go to Network Preferences ---> Advance and deleting the problematic network?