Airport no longer working... giving up hope

A

aislinnx

Registered
The past few days, my computer has been having problems connecting to the wireless network at home. Almost every time the laptop goes to sleep, it self assigns an ip address and I cannot get online. I have tried restarting the computer, resetting the router and scrapping the airport preference file.

I have also contacted our internet provider who directed me to set up a new network location and to manually input the ip address. This hasnt worked either. Although the network setting no longer says the computer hasnt self assigned an ip address and says it is connected to the internet, I cant connect in the browser. Now the computer wont connect to the internet at all.

The IT guy said he was stumped and had no idea what could be wrong. (does not give me hope)

The only thing I can think of doing at this stage is a complete reinstall, but would like to avoid that if there is any possible option remaining.
 
maybe you can give us the network setup that you have, the kind of airport that you are using, how many machines are connected.

try these(although we still need your input on the questions above)
1. create a new location - if it still assigns a self-assigned IP or 169....
2. move the system configuration folder to the desktop
/Library/Prefences/SystemConfiguration
before you move this folder be sure to screen capture the computer name and the settings in your network
3. once moved, restart the mac.
4. Reset up the network in network preferences.
5. Put the computer to sleep, wake it up. See if you have internet
 
I tried all of the above steps and am still getting the same "self-assigned ip address". Using the automatic location is giving me a 169 ip, while setting up a new location is resulting in no ip address at all apparently...

Re the network setup, I am trying to connect using DHCP. There are two pcs also connected wirelessly and they have been working fine. And im not sure what kind of airport Im using, the one that comes with the OS is all I am aware of!
 
Maybe the mac address filtering is enabled. Try doing a factory reset in our router and modem if its still not working. Try doing an archive and install or erase and install
 
I had done an erase and install a couple of hours ago and no luck. Just reset the router and its still saying the same thing, and still no connection!
 
First try to see if you Mac sees it. Hold down the 'option' key while clicking on the top left menu Apple symbol and in the drop down will be "System Profiler", launch that. In the left hand column select "Airport Card" and see if your Mac sees it still.

Plus read the column Tutorial: Fixing Wireless connectivity (including AirPort) problems: Dropouts, slow speed, more to see if one of those suggestions helps you.

Lastly people have reported in the past that going into Safe Mode then booting back into normal mode fixes a lot of wireless issues.
 
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The computer is still recognising the airport card. I read the above article and went through the different suggestions, and none seemed to work. Also tried it in safe mode and switching back to normal and again nothing...

Very confused!
 
Satcomer said:
Lastly people have reported in the past that going into Safe Mode then booting back into normal mode fixes a lot of wireless issues.
Click to expand...

No doubt it will. I've seen it first hand work like a champ. Also check for 3rd party apps causing issues, seen that before as well. Try finding another network as well (i.e. public library, coffee shop) to help isolate the issue to the computer or equipment.
 
Ok so I brought the laptop to a friend's house and to my shock it worked perfectly on their network. Wish I had done that before the erase and install. Any ideas where to go from here to get it to work again on my network?
 
aislinnx said:
Wish I had done that before the erase and install. Any ideas where to go from here to get it to work again on my network?
Click to expand...

Yeah, definitely got to take some advice given here with a grain of salt in regards to listening to that advice from that post. That is an absolute last resort, especially without a good backup.

Where I would go now is check your routers configurations. First of all check for newer firmware. This should be a function built right into the routers config page if its not a really old router. Otherwise perhaps the router has an ACL (Access Control List) set up on it. Or perhaps another special configuration is the router has a very short range of available ip addresses. These options mentioned here a usually more advanced settings so there is a good chance these things won't apply to you. One thing I would check is your routers security settings such as it being WEP, WPA, or WPA2. I know WEP doesn't play nice with newer versions of OSX. Worst case scenario there should be something in your routers config page to backup your settings. Once your settings are backed up, perform a hard reset (directions for hard resets very by router but can be found on the manufacturers web-site). This will bring the router back to factory default settings. After doing that I would just leave the router at the defaults to see if it connects. If it connects fine that way try to restore the settings from the backup file or enter them back in manually and see if it still connects fine.
 
Ok, so I got home after it working on another network and logged on to the routers config page on another computer. I plugged in my own laptop in the meantime and... it worked......

?

This was before I got to the stage of restoring the routers factory settings, which I have since done.

I am of course very happy that itys working, but very confused about how this happened without the powers of magic!!
 
I agree with DJ, better yet before you go out. Boot from the mac os x install dvd and once you are in the welcome screen after selecting the language. You will see a wifi signal there, try connecting from there.

Try disabling the wireless password, see if that works for you. What kind of mac are you using?
 
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