Question of the Day: Leopard Causing Wi-Fi Dropouts?
We’ve noticed this a bit ourselves, but reader ggperez points out that there’s been some reports of Airport Wi-Fi dropouts on Mac laptops running Leopard. He describes the situation:
After a few seconds of internet browsing, the browser hangs up and you get a problem loading page/lost connection message (both firefox and safari). The problem is, Airport is still connected to the network. If you click the airport icon at the top of the screen airport status changes from “Airport Scanning” to “Airport on”, then the internet works again. Only to go back into scan mode a few seconds later and repeat the cycle. There are MULTIPLE discussions on apples support forums, but no solutions.
A sample discussion thread can be found here. We wouldn’t point this out if we haven’t experienced it ourselves—both at home and at the luxurious hobo-stained Imperial Palace we stayed at during CES. Have you noticed this? We’d notice that one machine using Leopard would drop out while another one on Tiger sitting 2 feet away would stay up. You? Throw up a comment.
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
i’ve experienced another issue all together involving DNS with leopard and just safari.
if your connection drops out while browsing, the next time you connect, it just comes up with a “safari cannot find website”, even though every other website will again work, but the one you were navigating to at the time of the crash wont.
weird issue!
I used to have this problem but with my Netcomm router instead of the iBook. The problem was the router would get very hot, the heat causing the wifi signal to drift off station. I fixed it by blowing cool air from a $10 desk fan over it. Although I haven’t had this problem since upgrading (paradoxically and touch wood my wifi reception is better than under Tiger), perhaps Leopard is overdriving the CPU and other components, the heat causing the signal to drift? Maybe try a cooler setup and see if this helps?
This is a major problem for me when running Leopard on my Powerbook G4. I managed to sort of fix it by using OpenDNS but it’s still not perfect.
I think we’ve had this. At first I thought it was the wireless extender I own – so switched it off. Then kept on seeing it and tried rebooting the linksys wireless ADSL router. Still same issue.
Other PCs (wired & wireless) do not suffer the same problem.
Have changed wireless channel to 11 in case its interference from a neighbour.
I had full bars on 10.3.9 forever. I upgraded to 10.5 and it won’t go past 2 bars. Definitely a bug. I’m on a mirror door. It seems to be a G4 problem. Add it to the list of bugs. ;-)
I have 3 Mac Systems…a Macbook pro with tiger, an iMac with leopard, and a macbook air with leopard. Both leopard systems have exhibited this problem non-stop, while my macbook pro does not. It definitely seems to be a leopard problem.
Another clue is that I didn’t see this until I updated to 10.5.2…
I’m hoping for a fix soon! It drives me nuts. :)
I have 3 Mac Systems…a Macbook pro with tiger, an iMac with leopard, and a macbook air with leopard. Both leopard systems have exhibited this problem non-stop, while my macbook pro does not. It definitely seems to be a leopard problem.
Another clue is that I didn’t see this until I updated to 10.5.2…
I’m hoping for a fix soon! It drives me nuts. :)
I also experienced this problem. After using wifi on my macbook, which is running leopard a while, I lost the connection. My download stopped, safari and firefox couldn’t load the web pages although my wifi connection bar still have full signal. It only works again when I restart the machine. This issue really ANNOYS me, any idea ?
I just switched to macbook with leopard from PC and have had wi fi dropouts ever two to three minutes nonstop on several different systems. I’m astonished you mac users take this so matter of factly when it is a fatal flaw in this program that renders the computer barely useable. Can it really be true there is no fix for this? I’m just floored and astonished. (And cannot take this computer back.) Grateful for anyone who has a better answer than that it cannot be fixed, which is simply unacceptable.
Being the proud owner of a brand new Mac Book Pro, I’d highly recommend buying the same, unless you need to connect to the internet or burn discs.
Other than that, the computer is great.
I have five items in my house running off my wireless network — a Tivo Series 2, a Tivo HD, a G4 Mac Mini (Tiger), a G4 PowerBook (Tiger), and a NEW MacBook Pro (Leopard). I *do* have interference issues in various locations in my 60 yr old house, BUT I can put my MB next to the Tivo HD, the Mini, and the PB and get terrible to non-existent transmit rates (11 or less) while ALL of the other items get flawless connections to the router. After owning the machine for two weeks I took it to the Houston Apple Store where a “genius” was shocked that I could not pick up their network. He thought I must have a corrupted pref file, so he rebooted the machine in single user mode and deleted the hidden network preferences file (he said that bad airport cards are as likely as winning the lottery). Upon restart, the machine picked up Apple’s network and about five more in the Galleria. Great! Solved! Right? Nope. Within days the problem started up again. Obviously this is an OS problem, and the problem is “simply” fixed by deleting the hidden pref file. Apple obviously knows they have a problem. They obviously know how to treat the symptoms, but they OBVIOUSLY do not know how to cure it. I have seen posts on this problem since November of 2007. It’s now 10 months later. Apple, get with the program!!!
It’s a real issue, and only effects leopard machines using wifi security. On the same network my windows machines and ubuntu machine running wifi have no issues, EVERY. But ever since switching to leopard my macbook is HORRIBLE, dropping out all the time, and not connecting on wake / startup, and airport scans constantly. It’s a real mess, and apple refuses to admit the problem exits. It’s an old issue.