Failed wireless connection

Hello, I'm hoping someone may be able to help. My wireless connection keeps failing on my MacBook Pro. Currently I'm connected via an ethernet cable which works fine, but ties me to one place. I've tried the diagnostic solving through Safari Help. Tried connecting through System Prefs, but the connection fails all the time. Often it says Airport is on and my network name is ticked, but then nothing. I've emptied my Safari cache too. I'm at a loss for what to do now. Any ideas?

hopefully Ruchard or Wim will pick up on this - both know more about MAC them the rest of us. However, in the meantime here's a couple of things to try (both are reposts from old threads)

First try this:
On your mac go into applications / utilities and open "keychain access". Search for your wireless name and delete it. Try to reconnect to your wireless network.

If that fails, try this
1. Turn Airport OFF
2. Navigate to the folder /YourHardDrive/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration
and delete the files:

a) com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
b) com.apple.nat.plist
c) com.apple.network.identification.plist

3. RESTART immediately!!!! This will rebuild those files in OS X.
4. Open the restart open System Preferences->Network pane and join your wireless network again.

It worked in the case I was dealing with, not sure if it will yours, but try it

basically you're deleting the network preference configuration files. They will get rebuilt when you reconnect to the network


Its also worth knowing that the Thomson routers that Plusnet provide have (or had) issues when used with some MAC models. Do you have one of those?

Hi Jon, thanks for the response. I have some urgent work I need to get done today, tight deadline, so I will try this later and let you know how I get on. Fingers crossed!

Hi again. Sorted out the rush jobs so tried your suggestions.
Went to 'keychain access', but my wireless name wasn't even in there - could this be the problem?
Also tried the second suggestion, but the three files (a, b + c) were also missing.
I have no idea whether I have a Thomson router. I've had my Mac since Nov 2009. It's a MacBookPro 5,3 runs on Mac OSX 10.6.8 and Safari v 5.1 . I've not had any extras fitted to it internally or use any dongles, or that sort of thing.
Can you shed any light? Thanks, Kate.

The router is the box with all the lights, plugged into the phone network and provided by the internet company .... if its a Thomson one it'll have that printed on it

Going back to the problem , either the networking configuration setup has changed in later releases of OSX, or theres something strange going on.
Anyone else any ideas? - this is beyond my expertise. Richard? Wim?

Richard to the rescue….. hopefully!

Kate, try these:

1. Turn Airport OFF
2. Navigate to the folder (NOTE THE DIFFERENCE):
/YourHardDrive/YourHomeDirectoryLibrary/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/
and delete the files Jon listed:

a) com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
b) com.apple.nat.plist
c) com.apple.network.identification.plist

If you can't find your wireless network in the keychain then it means you have NEVER connected to it using the Mac but you also say that the Airport is on and the network name is ticked.

Do you have a phone or another laptop with wireless? If so can you connect to the wireless?

Try this as well:
Go to System Preferences -> Network -> Airport -> Advanced -> Select your wireless network name and press "-" to delete it. Shutdown, restart and try again.

Hi Richard, not having much luck I'm afraid. I found the files to delete, well a) and c), not b). Did that and restarted. Wireless connection works for a few minutes then disconnects.

Also had another look in keychain access, wireless name was there this time, but couldn't get it to delete. And tried the last suggestion, also couldn't delete.

My husband's pc laptop works fine. My mac used to be fine wirelessly, so I can't figure out why it's behaving like this.

The router is a BT Home Hub.

Over to you!
Kate

unless Richard has any more ideas, I think we've hit the buffers in trying to diagnose this through this forum
Two choices really - try Apple's own user forums at
https://discussions.apple.com/index.jspa

Or else raise a job request for one of our team to come and visit you - see http://www.pciq.com

Hi Kate,

Follow these instruction to create a peer-to-peer network:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/8339.html

If this works and your husband can connect to it using his laptop then the airport card is good and something is wrong with your installation of OSX.

If it doesnt work then your airport card is faulty / intermittently faulty and will need replaced.

Hi, just wanted to report back on my result. I went to the apple forum as you suggested. I hope this is an okay thing to do, but they said:

Switch off wifi on the machine. Then go on and delete the files mentioned below. You will find the files on your system drive (not your home folder) as follow:

/library/preferences/com.apple.preferences.accounts.plist
/library/preferences/com.apple.preferences.sharing.plist
/library/preferences/SstemConfiguration/preferences.plist
/library/preferences/SstemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences.plist

If there are files in this folders with the same name but additional .orig at the end, delete them too.
It is possible that not all files are on your system. That will be ok.
The files will get newly created by system on reboot. Reboot the machine. Join your wireless again....

It's not dissimilar to what you said, I think there's an extra file included. However, this has worked for me.

So ultimately, I thank you for pointing me in the right direction and getting my problem sorted. Kate

glad you got it fixed
Thanks for the feedback