From Where I Sit: Fix for Wireless Connection Problems on MacBook Pro

What I’m Reading

Shelby Foote: The Civil War: A Narrative (3 Vol. Set)
If you like David McCullough (1776, John Adams, Truman, etc.), you will love this history of the Civil War. I could not put it down. As is the case of most history, the book is full of leadership lessons and insights.
Dr. Bob Rotella: Golf Is a Game of Confidence
From time to time, I enjoy reading books on golf psychology. This is one of the best I have read. It basically focuses on directing a golf ball like you direct any ball—you focus on where you want it to go!
Eugene O’Kelly: Chasing Daylight
A remarkable by the former CEO of KPMG. Diagnosed with late-stage brain cancer, O’Kelly figures out life only when he is faced with his own imminent death. Must reading!
Mark Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
I'm reading this now for our book club. I haven't read it since high school. It is an amazingly well-written book. It gives you a peak into pre-civil-war America.
Graham Greene: The Power and the Glory
We just read this book in our book club. I wanted to through it across the room after three chapters. But I stayed with it. I'm glad I did. It is an amazing novel with some powerful, redemptive themes.
Jeff Gomez: Print Is Dead: Books in our Digital Age
If you are in the publishing business, this book is must reading. Gomez explains why print is dying and why content providers need not fear—provided they don’t get too attached to the delivery mechanism. I found it to be very compelling.
Cliff Atkinson: Beyond Bullet Points:: Using Microsoft® Office PowerPoint® 2007 to Creat Presentations That Inform, Motivate, and Inspire
This is the best book currently available on making compelling presentations. If you use PowerPoint (or Keynote, for that matter), this is must reading. It will make you stand out from the crowd and deliver a truly stellar performance. I cannot recommend it too highly.
Wallace Earle Stegner: Crossing to Safety (Modern Library Classics)
This is one of the best novels I have ever read. It is an insightful story about the relationship between two couples over several decades. We read it in our book club, and it stimulated an amazing discussion.
John G. Miller: QBQ! The Question Behind the Question: Practicing Personal Accountability in Work and in Life
In this remarkably simple book, John Miller articulates the often missing incredient to developing high performance teams: accountability. I highly recommend this book.
David McCullough: John Adams
An amazing book. Absolutely spellbinding. This is a great book on leadership.

Favorite Quotes

“Every search begins with beginner’s luck. And every search ends with the victor’s being severely tested.”

–Paulo Coelho
“Multi-tasking is dead. It never worked and it never will. Intelligent people love to sing its praises because it gives them permission to avoid the much more challenging alternative: focusing on one thing.”

–Timothy Ferriss
“Fight as if you are right; listen as if you are wrong.”

–Karl Weick
“Anyone can count the seeds in a melon. It takes vision to count the melons in a seed.”

–Unknown
“Before you become a leader, success is all about growing yourself. After you become a leader, success is about growing others.”

–Jack Welch
“This coffee falls into your stomach . . . sparks shoot all the way up to the brain. From that moment on, everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination’s orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink—for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder.”

–Honore de Balzac
“You see, when there is danger, a good leader takes the front line. But when there is celebration, a good leader stays in the back room. If you want the cooperation of human beings around you, make them feel that they are important. And you do that by being humble.”

–Nelson Mandela
“Our job is not to figure out the how. The how will show up out of a commitment and belief in the what.”

–Jack Canfield
“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s forthcoming attractions.”

–Albert Einstein
“We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up in teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing. And a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress whilst producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.”

–Gaius Petronius, AD 66
“Now if you are going to win any battle, you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up. It is always tired in the morning, noon, and night. But the body is never tired if the mind is not tired.”

–George S. Patton, U.S. Army General, 1912 Olympian
“I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

–Wayne Gretzky, as quoted by Steve Jobs in his keynote speech at MacWorld 2007, San Francisco
“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

–Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, as quoted in Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick, p. 28

Monday, January 01, 2007

Fix for Wireless Connection Problems on MacBook Pro

Warning: This is a semi-technical posting for Mac-heads with network connection problems. If you aren’t experiencing this particular problem, you probably won’t find this post too interesting. On the other hand, if you have this problem, you may well regard this information as a God-send.

I thought I was losing my mind. About a week ago, my wireless network connection started flaking out. I would be connected for about two minutes. Then the connection would suddenly drop out. All the while the signal strength would appear to fluctuate wildly.

The most disconcerting thing was that all the other computers in my house were working fine. So, that pretty much ruled out a problem with the modem or the router (an Airport Base Station). Nevertheless, I tried changing a few settings on the router and managed to completely trash the system. Argh!

I finally got it to work for a few minutes and posted a request for help in Apple’s Internet, Networking the MacBook Pro Support Forum. I promptly headed for the gym to chill out.

After an hour’s hard run, I came back to the forum and found that a guy named Brody had posted a reply. He directed me to a FAQ he had put together specifically for MacBook Pro connection problems. I highly recommend it. I had already tried most of his suggestions, but #12 completely healed my system. I have been up and running with zero problems for the past two hours.

Here’s what I did:

I clicked on the Apple Menu () on the upper left-hand corner of the screen. I selected System Preferences. I then clicked on the Network icon.
In the drop-down Show field, I selected Network Port Configurations. I then clicked on the Airport entry and drug it to the top, so that it was the first entry in the list. It looked like this:
I then clicked on Apply Now and shut down my computer.
Next I re-started my computer and zapped the PRAM. This sounds more dangerous than it really is. You simply hold down the Command (⌘), Option, P, and R keys simultaneously immediately after re-starting the system. You must do this before the gray screen appears. Don’t let go of the keys until you hear the startup sound for the second time.

That’s all there is to it. Evidently, something got corrupted in my PRAM. Clearing it fixed the problem. Kind of like a reboot.

Don’t worry if you don’t understand what PRAM is. I still don’t. All I know is that my system is fixed, and I am happily surfing away.

Technorati Tags: connection problems, mac, macbook pro, wintel, wireless

Posted on Monday, January 01, 2007 at 09:16 AM in Hardware, Mac | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/24762/7340381

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Fix for Wireless Connection Problems on MacBook Pro:

Comments

A Mac head! I always knew I liked you, Mike. I just got my first Mac last September, a MacBook, and I'm sooo in love with it. I'm never going back.

I'm going to bookmark this in case I ever have a problem with my, um, PRAM. LOL

Posted by: Colleen Coble | Friday, April 27, 2007 at 09:49 PM

Hi Michael,

I'm happy that I came across your article on the Macbook Pro. I've been having the same connection issues since the summer time and it is maddening!! I've had my airport card replaced and it is still doing it. If I restart the computer, when it comes back, it will lose the connection (including the icon) completely. I have to shut down the computer and then restart it to regain my connection. I've just tried your solution (and boy was I happy to find it). It seemed to work for a few seconds and now Safari will hang as it's trying to open a new page as the connection icon is fluctuating. I'm only 4 feet away from my Airport Extreme. I've spoken with Apple (prior to finding your article) and they state that their engineering dept is aware of it and they are trying to figure it out. Their suggestion is to hang tight until an update is created.
Have you had any other readers post comments with some tech support on this issue?
Other than that I love the laptop. But this is definitely a frustrating issue!!

Posted by: Sean Harling | Wednesday, October 24, 2007 at 10:51 PM

Hi, I have the same problem with Airport and I tried to replace the AirPort icon onto the first place and then I tried the think with PRAM and you know what. IT DOESNT WORK!!!! My high-end notebook wifi sucks. I dont know what to do.

Posted by: da.master | Monday, December 24, 2007 at 07:32 PM

This behaviour can be caused also by a corrupted entry in the keychain for the WEP or WPA passwords.

Delete keychain entry, reboot and re-enter can solve this also.

Posted by: Jukka | Monday, January 14, 2008 at 03:37 PM

IM STILL HAVING THE ISSUE DAMNIT! It drops every 30 seconds or less. Im going f***ing NUTS!

Posted by: Sandra Waechter | Monday, February 11, 2008 at 12:30 AM

Hi everyone, my Macbook pro that I also love so much, it is far superior to my "Windows systems"I am going off topic, anyhow I am a computer engineer and I also was getting frustrated and going out of my mind with my wifi dropping every 30 to 60 seconds, I reverted to what I learned in networking throughout my education, and I simply turned off IPV6 in my network settings, and VOILA, I have not dropped since, and I go from network to network.
To disable IPV6, go to you airport settings,Open Network settings,Advanced,TCP/IP, and there you can simply disable IPV6, this is a quick fix that allows you to stay connected without getting booted, without having to modify anything,and if an update does finally become available, you have nothing to try to figure out, just install it.
Lets keep in mind, the things that frustrate us, are most time the greatest pass times, a simple flaw in wireless is still better than the flaw Vista as been raised to become.

Posted by: JP | Saturday, April 12, 2008 at 09:35 PM

arg! nothing seems to fix this same issue that I'm also experiencing!!! FIX IT APPLE!!!

Posted by: jdragon | Tuesday, May 06, 2008 at 12:45 AM

About Me