Out of the middle of nowhere today my MacBook Pro wouldn’t reconnect to my WiFi connection. This happened after I awoke the computer from sleep. It took a restart to get it working again. A few hours later the same thing happened when I woke the computer up again, but this time it wasn’t fixed after a restart. I connected to my Linksys wrt54g wireless router with a manual IP address and snooped around. I ended up clearing the DHCP clients table and then trying to reconnect with DHCP. The router assigned my computer a new IP address in the clients table, but the computer itself didn’t get the address. This seemed kinda strange.
After a bit of reading on the internet it seems that there are quite a few people who’s Mac’s won’t reconnect their WiFi after sleeping. I attempted some of the most common fixes.
- Turning AirPort on and off
- Reconnecting to the access point
- Deleting the following files
- com.apple.internetconnect.plist
- com.apple.internetconfigpriv.plist
- com.apple.internetconfig.plist
None of this worked. So I gave up for an hour or so. When I returned, as randomly as it stopped connecting to the internet it started working again. Maybe it was a delayed reaction from one of the above fixes. However, this was only a temporary fix.
Whenever I would put the computer to sleep it would loose its connection with the access point. However, unlike before, I could reconnect by turning AirPort off and then back on again. This is less than optimal though. It was really a pain in the butt to do all the time. Especially since I have the computer set to go to sleep after 5 minutes of inactivity.
I set out to eliminate this problem. I must have created a new ‘Location’ in the Network System Preferences when I first got my computer before I knew what I was doing. So I deleted that. Then I clicked the options button and set ‘Keep looking for recent networks’ when a preferred network is not found. Next, I removed all the ‘Preferred Networks’. Followed by opening the Keychain Access application and removing all keys related to those preferred networks.
After all these changes my MBP now reconnects upon waking up from sleep again. It took me a few hours to figure out what was going on and find a fix for it. I can’t say for sure exactly what the ended up being the solution since I was trying multiple things. I do know however, that one of the things listed above took care of the problem. At least now if it happens again I’ll be able to hopefully fix the problem quickly!
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Again, another post I’m glad to stumble upon. I have a Linksys WRT54GS running Sveasoft’s firmware. I had been using a 17″ Powerbook G4 successfully forever with it. Out of nowhere, I started experiencing the problems you describe. I was thinking that perhaps it was the result of an update to Tiger.
Then I got the MBP and I have the same issue!! It seems to be connected to the channel that the router is currently on. Whenever the problem occurred, the router’s wireless status page would show it was on channel 1. It was set to automatically select a channel. I set it to channel 11 and the problem disappeared for a few weeks.
Then, it reoccurred. So, I’ve now got it set on channel 12.
I’m also going to implement the steps that you’ve described. Hopefully this will lick the problem entirely.
After writing the post I remembered that I also made one other change. Under the Airport button there is an option that says…
“By default, join:”
“Preferred networks” was selected, but I changed it to “Automatic”. Give that a shot. Every time I awake my computer I cross my fingers and how the issue doesn’t come back :)
I’m having the same problem- randomaly my network just diappears from Airport. I haven’t tried restarting, but I’ve had to create my home network like 6 time since I got this Mac ( a month ago). Does Apple take computers back if you just don’t like it?
I’m beginnging to get really frustraited with Mac…it’s not overheating- it’s random when I have email and Firefox open. One second I’m online and the next the whole connection is gone, missing, disappeared from Airport. Soooo annoying.
I am in the midst of HATING my MBP…it has been in Apple 4x and everytime I get it back something else goes wrong. This last time they took it in and completely wiped out the hard drive in an attempt to get it to stop typing backwards, the cursor from disappearing, and random rolling of the drop down menus. Well NOW I cannot connect to my linksys wifi which I always was able to do, and I can’t even connect using an ethernet cable either WTF????? I HATE HATE HATE this Mac….plus when I call Apple Care, they are closed! My DELL support at least is 24/7!!! So $3200, and 4 attempted fixes later, I am VERY unhappy!!!
Try this: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306879
Can’t say if it works, but it’s worth a shot. Please let me know if you use this method successfully.
@jacob: tried it 3-4 times on my mbpro core2. no joy. i thought this was keychain related but I’ve deleted my preferred network settings and network passwords in keychain. i manually logged into to a wrt300n wifi network, opened a terminal window and started pinging the defalt gateway, then put the laptop to sleep. sure enough ‘host is down’ messages on wake. airport icon shows i’m connected, ip address assigned.
this solved my problem
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=1672
referenced in the apple discussion thread here
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1200966
Update on my situation (mbp core2 w/10.5.1, linksys 802.11n WRT300N w/latest available 0.69 firmware feb06, running WEP due to some compat issues with other hardware). My connectivity problem has come back with a vengeance after working for about a week. Back to the exact same situation as before. Everything worked fine in Tiger - Leopard introduced the problem in my case.
1) connected to the wrt300n, put mbpro to sleep
wake mbpro, no connectivity despite airport icon showing full strength, check network prefs, says it’s connected. open a terminal window to ping the router, host is down messages.
2) turn airport off, then on. comes back up in one of three scenarios
(a) no IP address but menubar icon showing connected
(b) self assigned IP
(c) showing connected with dhcp address, but no actual connection.
3) deleting the keychain entry for the network password helped once. after that no joy. problem still occurring even without a keychain entry. this is not a keychain related problem despite what peoplr are thinking.
4) sometimes deleting the saved network and joining it manually works.
5) deleting the airport in network config, shutting down and then rebooting appears to fix the problem temporarily. problem definitely comes back though.
So in case anyone’s curious, I narrowed the problem down to config of the WRT300n. Basically it was running “Mixed Mode” which for this wifi router means B, G and N support. I used to connect at a max speed of 130 mbps (I could see this by holding down the option key when clicking on the airport icon on the menu bar). 2 things unfortunately cause issues:
1) there’s no way to support just 80211″g” and “n” with this router. it’s either mixed b g n, n only, g only, b g only or nothing. i got rid of all my b devices a while ago but like many of you have several g devices.
2) like others I’ve read about i switched from “Mixed Mode” to “G Only” and the Leopard MBpro wifi wake-up problem is now gone. unfortunately I also lost my “n” so that’s no good
Anyway I took the plunge and picked up a new airport extreme with the gigE hub and USB. after messing around I settled on having it serve wifi as pure N only. the speed info on the laptop now shows 300mbps within 10 meters or so, 20-54 mbps at the other end of the house. So I definitely got a speed bump, and I can still connect via the G only access point too so now I’m set. expensive though.
At least in my case it’s clear that a mixed mode config causes problems. Hope this helps someone out there.
Had an awful time with this immediately post Leopard upgrade. I tweaked the settings on my Linksys WAP to G only as well as changed the channel to one that was unused nearby and thought that that had solved my issue, but in the last few days it has started happening again. I realized I hadn’t upgraded the firmware on the WAP so I did that today. So far, life seems to be good.
same thing happened to be on my macbookpro running tiger. was definitely due to a recent upgrade (not sure which one). had no problems connecting to my wrt300n linksys router before that. now, once mbp goes to sleep, wakes up showing airport connection but with no actual internet access (message displays “you are not connected to the internet”). not much short of restarting the computer gets it going again. haven’t tried safe mode and haven’t tried switching router to “n” mode only.
truly frustrating…
I’m more and more convinced it’s not OS X or the laptop. The WRT300N is a ‘pre 802.11n’ router. what I suspect is going on is that the new OS X drivers are fully 802.11n compliant but the router isn’t. Linksys has not released new firmware for the WRT3ooN since early last year.
I gave up on using 802.11n with this router, bought an airport extreme 1G and run the linksys in G only mode, the apextreme in Nonly wideband. I now get 300mbps link speed *short distance though).
Note the airport extreme has it’s own problems though - Back to My Mac issues. People are expecting a firmware upgrade for it soon.
good luck..
forgot to mention that DD-WRT firmware runs great on the WRT300N, as long as it’s version 1 (not 1.1 or 2.0. DDWRT has lots of cool features including VPN and VoIP support, dnsmasq for DHCP and DNS, even a VoIP version.
i dont know how to change the channel of my router?
can any one help me please?
My girlfriend’s 17″ MBP is doing the exact same thing after a Leopard install. We are connecting to an Airport Extreme and Express wifi network, not a linkysys. I’ll continue to search for a solution…
i had the same problem and I almost tiried everything stated above to make my macbook wifi connection faster; at the end I learned that there are some modems in the market which are not competible with macintosh; maybe you also have the same problem
If you have run into Airport wireless connection problems after installing the Leopard 10.5.2 update, and you have a D-Link wireless router, here is your solution:
1. Go to your D-Link router’s administrative page
2. Click on “Set-up,” then click on “Wireless Settings”
3. Then for 802.11 mode, choose Mixed 802.11g,,802.11b
4. DO NOT choose Mixed 802.11n, 802.11g,,802.11b
That will eliminate Airport internet connection problems.
Hi Kgarzo,
I have the same issue over here with the 10.5.2 update… I have also a DLink router. Your solution about changing the speed, could help but the case here is that i have a 17 inch macbook and a 15 inch macbook. Did on both the updates and on the 17 inch no problems, the 15 inch the problems as mentioned in this thread..
So in my opinion a macbook related issue….
Great! Changing the 802.11 mode to mixed 802.11g,,802.11b worked for
me on my MacBook Pro Intel core duo (15″ screen). I tried absolutely everything else until I came across your suggestion. I owe you big time..
…and Apple said the 10.5.2 update was to improve “compatibility and
reliablity issues. HAH!
kgarzo: I have no idea how you figured out that changing the dlink to choose just the Mixed 802.11g,,802.11b wireless setting solved the problem with wireless access for 10.5.2, but it worked for me. nice…very nice.
Hi ALL
I just got my MACBOOK, I read what you guys have describe in encountering the problems and solving the problems. The things about me, I am not a professional when it comes to IT, any one can offer simple solution?
I greatly appreciate.