Mac laptop will connect anywhere except at home.

February 25, 2024 11:15 AM

My ~one year old mac powerbook (M1Pro, Sonoma 14.1.3) recently stopped connecting to my home wifi network. I hadn't made any significant changes or updates. All my other devices still connect to home network seamlessly, including my older pre-M chip Macbook pro, and my current laptop itself also connects normally to other wireless networks per usual, including at work and cafes, etc. It also connects to my phone via hotspot.

Steps I have taken:

- Hard-rebooted the home network and used their software refresh tool (which its hard to say what it does other than "it takes up to 12 minutes") (in any case the router/modem clearly works fine as all other devices connect)
- Changed the name and password of the home network (then changed it back after that didn't work, all other devices still work)
- Hard rebooted the laptop
- Made the laptop forget my home network (this means it now times out after receiving the correct password and shows the password entry box again) (yes I am sure it is getting the right password)
- Uninstalled my personal VPN (Atlas, paid, not active anyway)
- Uninstalled my work VPN (Cisco)

My firewall and other such stuff is controlled through "MS Defender" the settings of which I can't alter (I have incomplete Admin privileges on this laptop - but no reason to think this was changed).

I can take it to the tech people at work but that's a process and never less than a few days. They would be the ones who could do a complete wipe and reinstall and I'd rather avoid that if possible as its the middle of term and my old laptop has a weak battery.

posted by Rumple to Computers & Internet (17 answers total)

I'm very suspicious that you say it's definitely the correct password when it just times out after a few minutes. Forgetting the network ought to have reset things such that you can reconnect again with a new password.
posted by Alensin at 11:19 AM on February 25

Response by poster: Thanks.

It's definitely the correct password that all other devices are using (it will show the password being entered). The specific message in the popup box is "The Wi-Fi network "penguins" requires a WPA2 password". Also, this problem arrived out of nowhere when the password and

It gives this same message if I enter the correct password, or an incorrect one - this may be a clue since the older laptop, running Monterey, includes the information that the password is incorrect in the popup box.

Just in case, I just changed the password only and left the network name the same and all other devices will connect with new password but new laptop still will not.
posted by Rumple at 11:40 AM on February 25

Might have to get a new WiFi access point and attach to router… basically make a second WiFi network.

Try booting in safe mode. (Hold shift until login screen comes up)

Try doing pram nvram and or smc resets. I don’t remember which of these are still relevant on a m1, but I know some of them are.

Also what exactly happens when it will not connect?
posted by creiszhanson at 11:58 AM on February 25

Is the number of Wi-Fi "channels" that your wireless router can provide greater or equal to the number of devices that you're trying to connect to it?
posted by heatherlogan at 12:08 PM on February 25

Response by poster: creizhanson - when it doesn't connect, it brings back the password entry box with this message ""The Wi-Fi network "penguins" requires a WPA2 password", on which the password entry field is already filled with the correct password.

heatherlogan - there are 9 connected devices at the moment (my daughters are visiting) but there have definitely been more than that in the past. It's about a year old router. I am in the admin settings and don't see a channels limit.

In any case, since I figured out how to get around the dumbed-down app for the router I am going to restore it to factory settings and see what happens (though I don't see why it is broken for just the one laptop)
posted by Rumple at 12:33 PM on February 25

May be an utter PITA but do you perhaps have a wired ethernet dongle you can use at home, to limp along with until you have time to take the laptop in to your IT folks? My M1 Mac seems to be perfectly happy using any old generic USBC dongle.
posted by caution live frogs at 2:54 PM on February 25

I doubt this is it, but when I can't get a device to connect to my network, it's usually because I forget that I have a strict setting on the network that doesn't allow new devices. I have to go into the network settings, look at attached devices, find the one that's blocked, and allow it. If something internal to the MacBook changed, like the MAC address, it could trigger this behavior. (While the MAC address changing is not common, it can happen.) If there's even a chance that your network has some kind of strict device policy, check the attached device list and see if the laptop is being blocked.
posted by Meldanthral at 2:56 PM on February 25 [1 favorite]

Yes, check the MAC address isn't absent from a list of allowed values.

Plus check the encryption settings, whether WPA2 or WPA2/WPA3 (transitional) or WPA3. Your newer Mac might be insistent on using only WPA3 encryption because the transitional WPA2/WPA3 edition was worse for security, and WPA2 is inexpensive to crack. There will be System Logs in macOS which will have more detail if this is happening. Read more at Apple Support.
posted by k3ninho at 3:20 PM on February 25

I've had issues with newer MacBook and networking as well, and one of the causes was having a 2.4Ghz/5Ghz AP on a single ssid, with jumps between them due to "band steering".

As a debug measure, I'd switch off 5Ghz and see if the macbook can connect then.

You haven't mentioned the brand of your home network equipment. I had these issues on Unifi, with all the other devices working perfectly except the brand new work MacBook.

Good luck!
posted by kandinski at 5:03 PM on February 25

Another "probably not this, but just in case" answer: my wife's MacBook will not connect to the wifi under any circumstances if it is also plugged into a monitor. As soon as it's unplugged from the monitor, it connects seamlessly. No other Apple, Windows, or Android device has any issues connecting to the wifi.

According to Apple this is similar to the "band steering" issue kandinski mentioned, in that somehow the monitor connection interferes with the wifi frequency. Their "solution" was to suggest buying a new router and seeing if that solved the issue but we didn't bother as she doesn't need to use a monitor very often so I've got no idea if that would work. But the mac does pick up the wifi if she uses her phone as an intermediary hotspot regardless of whether she's plugged into a monitor.

So there are definitely known issues with Apple and (at least some brands of) routers.
posted by underclocked at 12:01 AM on February 26 [1 favorite]

This smells like a firewall issue to me. If the firewall isn't under your control, you might need to visit to corporate IT support.

Meanwhile: does your wireless access point's admin control panel expose any kind of logging feature? You might be able to get some clue about what's going wrong by comparing what shows up in the log during a successful connection against what happens when your Mac tries to connect.

Do make sure that the only Wifi security feature turned on in your wireless access point is WPA2/3 with a decently long password. Specifically, you do not want to turn on SSID hiding or MAC filtering, both of which are ineffective security measures that will only ever make your WAP more likely to fail for legitimate users.

I've also seen Macs (and nothing else) fail to connect to non-Apple access points when there's a space in the WPA2 password. Yes, this is completely fucking idiotic.
posted by flabdablet at 5:25 AM on February 26

WPA2 is inexpensive to crack

It is if the password is weak and/or factory default. If the password looks like jympr.dmapa.jjrsr.htlym.awfya then as far as I'm aware, cracking WPA2 is still completely infeasible.
posted by flabdablet at 5:36 AM on February 26

Mac Sonoma is now at 14.3.1, you wrote 14.1.3. Typo or do you need to update?
posted by soylent00FF00 at 10:27 AM on February 26

I would try turning off security entirely on the network and seeing if your Mac attaches to it. The password may be a blind alley.

Also, the number of channels is extremely unlikely to have anything to do with it. You can put 50+ devices on a single channel if you want, and in fact it’s not uncommon for public access points to see those kinds of numbers.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:47 AM on February 26

Following up on underclocked's comment, I've also suffered the interference by cable to external monitor on my 2022 M2 Mac Mini, but the main symptom was erratic latency, not loss of connection to the access point.

Regarding other comments: a firewall would block internet traffic, but would not affect establishing a connection to the WIFI access point itself. MAC address filtering, however, can be performed at the AP connection level, so yeah, make sure it's turned off.

By all means turn things off as much as you can (while taking notes so you can turn things on again after your tests), but especially the features listed in the "wifi" section of your modem/router/access point.

Some wifi routers have an option to create a "guest" access point with a different password and configuration. If I were in your shoes, that's where I would make all the experiments, starting with limiting it to 2.4G, selecting WPA2 with no frills as the password standard, and turning off all of multicast enhancements, fast roaming, as well as the aforementioned band steering and any other purported enhancements the UI presents you with.

If I had to bet, I think your laptop is connecting on 2.4G, and then the access point says "know what? this is a fast machine that can do 5G", where you're not logged in, bumping you over and then the laptop and the access point can't negotiate that you already gave a password on the other band.

I'm following up because I've been in your position, and it was very frustrating. I really hope you can nail this soon!
posted by kandinski at 11:12 PM on February 26

a firewall would block internet traffic, but would not affect establishing a connection to the WIFI access point itself.

I disagree. It's completely true that the internet firewalls typically found inside wifi routers would not do this, but a misconfigured packet filter running inside the laptop certainly could. I've accidentally done it myself while learning how to firewall a Linux box properly.

This is why I suggested looking through the WAP's own event log, if it makes one available; if the laptop fails to respond to some packet from the WAP in the same way as other devices typically do, that could be evidence that the laptop's own packet filter is dropping that kind of packet, thereby screwing up the connection protocol.
posted by flabdablet at 2:06 AM on February 27

> I disagree. It's completely true that the internet firewalls typically found inside wifi routers would not do this, but a misconfigured packet filter running inside the laptop certainly could. I've accidentally done it myself while learning how to firewall a Linux box properly.

Ah, good point. I was thinking of the firewall in the route/modem, and not of the firewall on the laptop. Poor reading comprehension on my part, sorry for that!
posted by kandinski at 3:45 AM on February 27