Trout

iTrader: (1)

Is clearly a serious **** up by Apple!!!

It is much slower and less predictable in connecting than it was before. And sometimes you have to delete the whole network config and preferences to get it to connect at all!

Anyone else had this problem?

ScuuBdoo

No problems for me with Snow Leopard 10.6.1.

Markus

David,
Firstly, I'm not on SL yet, I'm waiting until at least 10.6.2 before going up, and even then I might wait a little longer as a couple of apps I use (pureftpd manager being one) aren't compatible with SL and I don't want to lose functionality.

Anyway, as for the issue, I've had a quick look around and found a few threads, one of which is this one which has a nice [solved] in the title. It's possible this could help you out, so have a read.

One other thing, have you installed 10.6.1 yet? If not, then do so, as there was a fix for Airport in there.

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Hi Markus,

I am 10.6.1.

On Tiger I used to open my MBP and it was connected.

On SL I open it and get the nice new radar waves then the dreaded !

Sometimes it then goes on to connect, sometimes not. Sometimes it says no IP and indeed there is not one. And if I renew DHCP lease it will get a valid IP address from my home network but not connect. Sometimes it then drops the IP again. Sometimes it does connect and still drops the IP address.

Overally very poor performance for a MBP that has been reasonably faultless for two years.

I had indeed used that very thread you referred to - it did not work as described - I had to delete all the plists and then rebuild the connection. It is working now - but for how long?!

It is particularly fussy on my home network as there is a range extender and so it can see two access points. Tiger had an Airport upgrade that was for this very reason I believe - and it worked very well.

BuRR

No problem here.

3 x Intel Macs on 10.6.

Trout

iTrader: (1)

I am so pleased for you

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Airport on my MBP is now unusable. It takes me ten minutes configure it to work. It will work, but if I close it up and open it up again I need to configure it again from scratch.

I would love to think this is a network problem - but it is only my SL MBP that has a problem on this network. Everything else is working fine - as my Tiger did for the last couple of years.

Now very sad with Apple and seeing that I am not alone as others clearly have this issue too.

BuRR

Trout - did you upgrade a Leopard install, or put a clean SL install from scratch?

I take it you've done all the usual disk permissions stuff?

Trout

iTrader: (1)

It was an upgrade.

Don't know anything about disk permissions!

Also not seen this mentioned in the many threads about SL and Airport.

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Did the repair thing - only three errors came up - none related to Airport.

BuRR

I honestly don't know - I *did * have some problems with my Airport at one time, with the MacBook on Leopard, but that was due to the channel on the Airport (11 at the time) and a neighbour's wireless.

I just changed the channel to 1 and all's been fine since.

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Well Apple claim there is no problem - and yet if you call them (as in the Markus thread post 22) they do have a solution, albeit non-trivial.

Also if you trawl the forums there seems to be more than the odd problem being reported with SL and Airport. The worst thing is that the problem itself shows up in so many different ways.

All very disappointing.

Markus

Apple is very funny when it comes to bugs. They typically don't publicly comment on them, unless there is a lot of media coverage, for example the Guest Account bug (Turn on Guest account in Leopard, upgrade to Snow Leopard and it can wipe out user data!) and they'll give some advice and say it'll be fixed at some point.

There is a development seed of 10.6.2 out, I'm not sure what is fixed in it, but it'd not shock me if there was something in there relating to Airport.

Disk permission fix may not mention airport, but it could (obviously it did not though) address issues as it could be incorrect permissions on a few files that are used by airport.

I hate to suggest this, as it might not help at all, plus it's a pain in the ****, but you could try backing up everything, then do a completely clean install of snow leopard, and then using the migration assistant, restore data from your backup and see if that helps any.

Markus

One other thought, doubt it'll help, but worth a look.

Go into System Preferences -> Energy Saver

Do you have a "Wake for Ethernet Network Access" option? If you do, is it checked, if so, uncheck it, reboot, sleep, wake, see if you have a problem. If it is checked, then disable it, reboot, sleep, wake, see what happens.

There is a wake on demand option in Snow Leopard, and I'm wondering if perhaps that might be causing a problem.

Trout

iTrader: (1)

The whole reinstall idea is not compelling! Thanks for the thought though!

I will check the other suggestion - it could be a good one.

The problem has only really shown up as I installed three weeks ago - but have been working and travelling since then and so on mobile broadband. It is only the last couple of days I have been working on my home network.

Thanks

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Hmmm!!! Whinging obviously works!

Having had two days of the whole thing not working - it is now working perfectly.

Mind you this is probably tempting fate!!

marklemac

Trout,

I'd recommend you do a an Archive & Install (whilst preserving the user!).

I've been running SL for a number of months now on various machines with no issues at all. I am still wary of rolling it out to my clients as there are issues with 'fonts' mainly and my client base is a large number of graphic designers. Certain older apps don't work well, but on the whole everything works well.

I haven't had any airport issues.

The A&I is a fairly painless thing to do.

Trout

iTrader: (1)

OK - I will look into that!

Thanks,

Trout

marklemac

Just as well you aren't asking to go back to 10.5 as this is a major pain in the a** to do.

I had to do a degrade on Friday for a client, you can Archive & Install but there is no preserve users option, so you have to manually covert the user back again. I don't want to be doing many of these that's for sure. I spent hours doing the degrade....

Trout

iTrader: (1)

The depths of my hatred of SL and it's complete **** up in support of wireless knows no bounds.

I am not a techny so reversing the whole thing out is not my forte and it just does not work on my home network. Some days it works fine, other days every time I wake it up from sleeping I have to restart my router, my range extender and the Mac to get it to connect.

All the while my shi**y IBM T60 from work sits next to it with no wireless issues at all - so it is not the network.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGH!

Markus

David, Have you installed 10.6.2 as yet? I don't know if there are any Airport related fixes in there, but if you've not installed it, give it a shot. Do NOT use software update though, go for the 10.6.2 Combo Updater and use that.

I think you have probably read the following (taken from here) but there is mention of booting into safe mode whilst performing step 2 again, not sure if you have tried that.

Details are:

1. Enter a new location - remember to go to the TCP/IP tab and Renew the DHCP Lease - seems to work for some.

2. Delete the contents of HD/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration, Empty Trash and Reboot.

I tried both in that order without luck. After deleting these settings, I still found traces for my Wireless network inside the keychain. I purged those too. Tried 2 again - no luck.


There is obviously some serious fault somewhere, and it's bladdy annoying to say the very least, and it's doing nothing but sour you, rightly so, against Apple.

Trout

iTrader: (1)

I have now established the pattern of behaviour. I have a router and two range extenders.

When Airport tries to connect to the furthest range extender it connects with five signal bars and then a few seconds later will drop the IP address.

This behaviour is consistent. Open Macbook, connect to wireless network, lose IP address.

I then have to renew the DHCP Lease and it usually works - sometimes I need to do it two or three times for it to retain the IP address. I tried forcing the IP manually but that went all a bit Pete Tong!!

I know that non-SL Airport had an update to better manage wireless networks with multiple access points. It worked OK before that update and even better afterwards. SL seems to have a major problem with this.

At least now I can get it to work by renewing the IP address - but it is a little annoying.

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Updated to 10.6.2.

Initially it was much worse. When I booted it up and said Renew DHCP Lease it could not find an IP address.

I deleted all the wireless configuration - powered down routers and extenders - started again and so far so good.

Fingers crossed.

Trout

iTrader: (1)

After initial promise it is back to square one.

Every time I open up my Macbook it drops the IP almost as soon as it sets it.

It worked fine for two days until I logged another laptop into my network and then KAPOW it stopped working. Even though the other laptop is long gone.

RUBBISH

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Fingers crossed, touch wood I seem to have found a solution that so far has worked.

So DHCP does not seem to work if another laptop comes on the network. It holds the IP for around ten seconds and then it is dropped. When I try using manual for some reason it will not connect. Even when I use an IP address that I have reserved on my router!!

I tried creating a reserved address on my router and using the same address Manually on the Mac. No success - it said it was connected but Firefox/Safari/Thunderbird all said there was no connection.

What did seem to occur is that no matter how I configured the Mac it only seemed to like one specific IP address resolved using DHCP - it was like it had a 'memory' certainly a preference. And all the 'deleting' guidance did not make it go away.

So - what I have done is change the addressable range of the router which now does not include the address the Mac seems to remember. Did a renew lease and hey presto for the first time since installing Snow Leopard an IP address other than 'the one' that actually works.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

Markus

I'm narked off you're still having this problem.

What is/was the address the machine was remembering?

One other thing, out of all the troubleshooting things you tried, did you happen to go into the advanced options for the wireless setup and disable IPv6, if not, give it a shot.

Also, you mentioned you specified manual addressing, now, was that the "Manually" option, or was it the "DHCP with Manual Address" option? If it was the latter then I've never had that work for me. I've always used the normal Manual setup and specified an address in the dhcp range.

I'm shocked you've not just chucked the effing thing out the window by now, obviously you have far more patience than I

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Hi Markus - it did end up on the floor once and fortunately it still works. It was connected I was in the middle of typing something and then it disconnected!!!

I didn't disable IPv6 will do that anyway.

It was Manually - it all looked connected but doesn't not seem to have any traffic.

'The' address was 192.168.0.3 - no matter what I did it would only connect with that IP.

I suspect what was happening was one of the other laptops on the network was connecting on .3 and the MBP was unable to renew the lease with a different address.

I have now made the addressable range of the router start at .10 and it works a treat - how 'spooky' is that.

Been working for hours now and even when I boot up another laptop it continues to work!!!

Markus

Ok, the 192.168.0.0 range is the classic Class C private range of addresses. Did you happen to have whatever is providing DHCP set to supply addresses in that range?

It does sound as though the other laptop was trying to connect with .3 and knocking things off, however, the laptop and/or the Mac should have displayed an alert stating that another machine is using that address.

If it does happen again, and I'm hoping it won't, I would be inclined to move away from the 192.168.0.x address range, try something like 10.0.0.0 or 10.0.100.0 (which is what I have mine set as) and see if it still messes up, hopefully using a completely different range you'd not see the problem.

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Hi Markus - I can set up my router to provide a difference range of IP addresses.

It does look like it was eventually a conflict - but I guess my question it why would renewing the lease not find the next available IP address; and/or why did I not get a message saying that there was a conflict. Finally, and if this was the case, why does my crappy lappy from work continue to work happily and my nice shiny ultra modern SL Mac entirely fail to deliver!

Never mind - I am hankering after buying a new machine as I have an early single core machine. Maybe a 2.8Ghz, 500gb machine would look quite nice in my bag!!!