Most Leopard wireless problems resolved
I've previously noted several problems associated with my upgrade to Apple's Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) system. The machine that has given me the most trouble has actually been my officially-supported Titanium Powerbook; my unsupported dual 800 MHz Quicksilver PowerMac works perfectly. Why? The problem has been that my wireless networking card 1) at first wasn't even recognized as being there, and 2) once it was recognized, would show only two bars and would occasionally drop connections.
However, at this point, the only symptom remaining is that my airport display only shows two bars; all my other problems have workarounds or solutions at this point. In case others are experiencing wireless problems on Leopard, here are the solutions I've used to get to this point:
It's clear that Apple changed its Airport drivers with Leopard, and that those drivers aren't completely bug-free. But all that said, I've now found a way to use them reliably. And given that Leopard gives me some other nice features like Time Machine and crash-free operation on my ancient and unsupported Quicksilver PowerMac, I have to say it's been worth the hassle. Like many other Apple users, just the Quicklook feature and new Mail.app capabilities have made me a Leopard convert.
Now if I can just find a way to get Photoshop 7 to run again, I'll be golden. But first I have to find my install CDs again, which isn't as easy a job as you might think, given they are now five years old.
However, at this point, the only symptom remaining is that my airport display only shows two bars; all my other problems have workarounds or solutions at this point. In case others are experiencing wireless problems on Leopard, here are the solutions I've used to get to this point:
- Safe boot recognized may airport card. As recommended in the Apple KBase document, I rebooted my Powerbook in safe mode by holding down the shift key after the startup bong. Then I rebooted normally, and Leopard recognized the airport card as it should.
- Building a new networking location from scratch fixed my dropout problem. Rather than using my upgraded networking settings, I built an entirely new networking location from scratch, specifying all the airport networks, passwords, and TCP/IP settings from scratch. Of particular importance was setting up my Domain Name Server (DNS) addresses correctly; once I fixed those, my wireless networking seemed to work fine except for one thing: I couldn't find the Snow Airport base station at my office using Leopard's Airport Utility. But surprisingly, I found a workaround for that today, specifically....
- 10.4's Airport Admin Utility allows me to configure my Snow Airport. Despite the fact that the new Leopard Utility named "Airport Utility" doesn't recognize or configure my Snow dual-Ethernet Airport base station, the old Tiger version of that utility named "Airport Admin Utility" recognizes and configures it just fine. And this is despite the fact that Leopard claims that that binary won't run under Leopard. Go figure. So I just copied that utility from my backup disk to my Utilities folder, and I'm back running completely wireless again.
It's clear that Apple changed its Airport drivers with Leopard, and that those drivers aren't completely bug-free. But all that said, I've now found a way to use them reliably. And given that Leopard gives me some other nice features like Time Machine and crash-free operation on my ancient and unsupported Quicksilver PowerMac, I have to say it's been worth the hassle. Like many other Apple users, just the Quicklook feature and new Mail.app capabilities have made me a Leopard convert.
Now if I can just find a way to get Photoshop 7 to run again, I'll be golden. But first I have to find my install CDs again, which isn't as easy a job as you might think, given they are now five years old.
Technorati Tags: Airport, Airport Admin Utility, Apple, Leopard, Mac OS X, WiFi, Wireless
posted by Carl Howe at
9:52 AM
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