How can I fix my wireless connection?

June 25, 2007 3:16 PM

Why has my wireless connection gone wonky? And how can I fix it?

I've got a G4 iBook, and a Belkin wireless router. Until about six months ago I was running 10.4 on the iBook, then, for reasons that don't matter, 10.3.9. Under both, the wireless signal was fine – full strength signal in all parts of the house, no dropped connections, etc. When I upgraded to 10.4.6 about two weeks ago, the wireless connection suddenly got very temperamental, and it's got to the point that the signal will disappear – i.e. when clicking on the Airport logo on the taskbar, my home network (nor any of the five or six others in the building) will not even appear as a network to join, in some parts of the house; previously, I could have wandered over to the other side of the street and still connected to my network. It's not the router – there's a Windows laptop in the same house that has no problems; in addition to that, there's a desktop eMac (running 10.2.8, if it matters) sat next to my iBook which has a perfect connection – and that's if I use the same Airport card that's currently in my iBook.

Frankly, I'm bored of this now, and it's starting to be a pain in the arse. I have an 8Mbps ADSL line, and I'd like to be able to use it to its full potential – as I had done before upgrading to 10.4.6. And I'm getting increasingly frustrated with the dropped connections, not to mention only being able to use my internet connection in prescribed parts of my flat.

I've hunted, and maybe I've missed some vital document, but is this (a) a known problem and/or (b) fixable? I'm presuming that there's some conflict between the OS and the router, but given that my iBook ran 10.4 and there were no problems previously, I'm at a loss ...

posted by Len to computers & internet (5 comments total)

You maybe (probably) have tried this: I disconnect my router for about a minute, then let it boot up again, and this has fix all manner of problems.

Not sure if it would work for this, but it's easy.

Good luck.
posted by Danf at 3:23 PM on June 25, 2007

I remember an issue like that way back when 10.4 just came out.

Under prefpane->sharing, change your computer's name to something shorter.

I believe the default is "Firstname Lastname's Macbook Pro".

There was a bug where if the name was too long (or something like that) your wireless would drop. Later patches fixed the issue though, is there any reason why you arent running 10.4.10?
posted by mphuie at 3:54 PM on June 25, 2007

A lot of things have been fixed between 10.4.6 and 10.4.10, and that includes new versions of the wireless NIC drivers. Before you try troubleshooting further, definitely upgrade to the current point release of the OS.

Having said that, I've had occasional problems with my wireless AP -- which is a rather more trustworthy brand than Belkin -- so it's not unreasonable to suspect it. But before you try to troubleshoot the WAP, try fixing your machine.
posted by majick at 4:18 PM on June 25, 2007

There were problems when 10.4 came out that only seemed to affect certain users, causing problems like what you've described. Nobody could figure out exactly what the problem was, and why it was hitting some people but not others, but the suspicion was that something was getting messed up during the upgrade itself. So it may be that you've got something corrupted during your upgrade to 10.4.

My laptop was affected by this - to this day I can't connect well with the routers at work.

You could try an archive and reinstall, if you haven't already... (I may have done this on mine, I can't honestly remember, but if I did it didn't fix anything...)
posted by wyzewoman at 7:09 PM on June 25, 2007

Ok, upgrading to 10.4.10 seems to have helped. (It was only laziness that prevented me doing so earlier.) It's still not brilliant, but it's workable enough to live with, and far better than it was before. Thanks everyone.
posted by Len at 9:28 AM on June 26, 2007