Printable View
I am facing a very strange problem with the Wireless reception in my Macbook Pro. The Macbook is installed with OS X 10.5. I use a Netgear Wireless router to access the Internet. The Problem which I am facing is, Wireless connection on the Macbook gets disconnected after some time. When the disconnection happens the Macbook has to be restarted in order to make Internet work again. Is this because of the operating system? or Is it because of faulty Macbook? Please suggest some solutions
A very simple troubleshooting step in networking area is to check the configuration of the Network which is defined. Sometimes the configuration gets manipulated when the system shuts down because of some power problems. Therefore we have to reconfigure the network settings on the laptop again so that we are able to access the network properly again. Check the Network preferences on the Macbook and change them if required. Reconfiguring the Network preferences will do the trick.
The drivers of the Airport card must not be working properly and hence you are facing such problems with the connectivity of the network. The peripherals which are connected to the Macbook do not work properly if the proper drivers are not installed on the system for it. Check if the current version of the installed drivers is working properly on the system or not. Remove the currently installed drivers and then reinstall them again and see if the network connection gets disconnected regularly. You can also try to update the installed drivers or install the updated version of the drivers and see if the problem persist.
The problem you are facing can be because of the corrupt operating system. If the files of the operating system which are used for networking are corrupt it creates problems like disconnection when connected to the network. Also as you have mentioned that the system has to restarted in order to get the connectivity back, it is definitely an operating system issue. If you have the install disk of the Operating system you are using then insert it and try to repair the installation. You can also install a fresh copy of the operating system by selecting the Install/Archive mode which will enable you to use the applications which were installed on the earlier operating system.
According to me the Airport card is faulty and needs to be replaced. A computer loses connectivity only when the network/ airport card is faulty. The airport card in the Macbook is not directly connected to the Logic board, instead it is mounted on the logic board and connected using connecting cord. If the connecting cord which connects the Airport card to the logic board is not properly connected then the Airport card will not function properly and the Macbook will get disconnected frequently. Check if the connecting cord is properly fixed. If it is not fixed properly then fix it and see if the network connection is still lost. If the connection looses even after properly fixing the connecting cord then you will have to replace the Airport Card.
I was also facing the same problem with my Macbook pro. I also used to lose the network connection frequently. I tried many troubleshooting steps but none helped. Later I figured out that the Airport card is getting heated beyond the threshold and hence is loosing the connection. It was getting heated as there was lots of dust around it and the cooling fan was not able to cool it efficiently. Cleaning the Macbook pro and the cooling Fan solved the problem for me and I hope it will solve for you too.