Apple Killed My Wireless Internet

Here’s a problem from 2007 that’s making a comeback: a lack of connectivity when you update 10.4.10 or later updates for MacBook.

This was back during my honeymoon period with Apple, when I implicitly trusted them and allowed them to automatically update my OS whenever they told me I should. I mean, it’s Apple. It just works, right? I’d had no problems with my MacBook in the seven or eight months since I bought it, and all other updates worked flawlessly. I couldn’t believe anything would ever go wrong with it.

Then, there was OS update 10.4.10

Afterwards, I could connect to any open network after the install (which was helpful, as the neighbors have an open, unguarded network) but not any with WPA encryption. Frustrated, but too proud to call the Apple Care support line I paid for, I reinstalled OS X version 6 and upgraded to version nine, the last update that worked.

That was in July of 2007.

Then, a few weeks ago, I bought Final Cut Express for a project I was working on, which necessitated an upgrade to 10.4.10 or later, and because of the problems I’d had previously, I installed the next update, 10.4.11. Surely Apple would have fixed the problem, right?

Nope. Final Cut worked, but once again, my uber-encrypted home network was rendered useless. The solutions seemed to be either take off encryption (and thus leave others in the household unable to do their confidential work at home — and possibly compromise my anonymity) or keep leeching off the neighbor’s network until a solution presented itself, as Apple’s website seemed to be ignoring the problem.

A quick google search revealed that more than one user had found themselves in similar situation, but the only solution seemed to be to either go backwards to 10.4.9 or go forwards to Leopard. Could it be that Apple was deliberately ignoring the problem so as to either force people to pay for the phone tech support or force them to upgrade to Leopard? One individual took his MacBook (duo core) back to the Genius Bar. A week later it was returned working, though the Geniuses could find nothing wrong with it, supposedly. Hmmm.

I was tempted, but still too proud to call or go into the freshly-opened store in my area. It’s not that I’m an elitist — only that I’m a recent convert to Mac, and I’m still operating on my experience from PC days: fix it yourself or get a hacker buddy to fix it for you (usually, you can bribe a college student with food to do this for you, by the way,) because Microsoft products are a piece of shit and tech support is laughable.

After (two) weeks of (not so) diligent searching, I finally stumbled upon a solution that worked. For the record, I did this while simultaneously installing WPA2 so either one solution works independent of the other or they work in combination. However, the solution listed below seems to be one which most will find useful.

1. Download Pacifist
2. Download Airport Extreme update 2007-002 Later updates will not work.
3. Download the 10.4.9 Combo Update
4. Go to /system/library/extensions and copy appleairport.kext and appleairport2.kext to a backup location just to be safe and then delete them from the extensions folder.I used a USB drive for the backup task.
5. Also in the extensions folder you’ll find IO80211Family.kext and copy it to backup folder and then delete it.
6. Open Pacifist
7. Open Package and choose the airport extreme update
8. In Pacifist you will now see all the files that are in the package. Find system and expand it’s tree by clicking on the triangle. then expand library and then extensions. You will now see the IO80211Family.kext file. Click once on it so it’s highlighted and then click “Install”.
9. When it’s done copying files expand coreservices and then menu extras. Highlight “Airport Menu” and click install.
10. When it’s done copying close the window in Pacifist for the airport update.
11. Open Package and choose the 10.4.9 combo
12. Again find the system folder and expand it and then expand the library and extensions folders.
13. In the extensions folder you’ll see a bunch of files. Look for appleairport.kext and highlight it. Click “Install”.
14. Repeat the previous step with appleairport2.kext
15. Reboot FTW

You should be back up and running in no time!

Edit #100,000: If this post has appeared on your RSS feed reader a million times in variations, it is because WordPress does not handle certain commands particularly well and I had to go through the directions, line by line, to find which lines WordPress found objectionable and re-write them several times to edit out the confusing phrases.