Mobile broadband software screwed up my airport settings!

Can anyone help me fix this before I return the dongle to the shop and very angrily demand a refund. I am reporting them to ofcom for this anyway, it's totally unacceptable!

The connection is great, I get a really great signal here so otherwise I am very happy with it, the trouble is though I would actually like the option to use a spuer fast wifi hotspot as well sometimes!

So there I was yesterday at my local hotspot, switched on my mac- no signal. Why no signal??? NO AIRPORT!

The software it installed asked for my system password and has taken upon itself to delete my airport and probably all the settings that went with it!

Played around with it for a while. reinstalled Airport as Airport 2 then 3 and so on, and each time the software deleted it. So I installed it and locked the system preferences so no further changes could take place, and that worked in so far as it picked up the router, only every attempt to connect to the router ended in failure. Tried also locking the software but I can't even do that.

I am really angry about this as I just spent some time re-installing the OS from scratch and sorting everything out, only to have their third party software take over my settings and screw everything up!

I am OS 10.5.8 can anyone help with fix this?

It's going to be pretty hard for anyone to assist as you left off:

What version of OS X are you using?
What Mac are you using?
What is the dongle you are using and what software did you install?

There may be someone here that has installed that particular software and is aware of some known issue it creates. But quite often, going to the manufacturers site of the device that is causing the problem can be a faster solution. They may have a newer version of the software that's taken care of some bug.

10.5.8, like I said. It's a macbook and the dongle is from three mobile internet, wasn't sure if I was allowed to say.

STU9000 said:

10.5.8, like I said. It's a macbook and the dongle is from three mobile internet, wasn't sure if I was allowed to say.

Click to expand...

Which model Macbook like he asked? There are a ton of different ones out there with different hardware.

OK, is this any help?

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook3,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MB31.008E.B02
SMC Version (system): 1.24f2
Serial Number (system):
Hardware UUID:
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled

AirPort Card Information:

Wireless Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0x88)
Wireless Card Locale: Worldwide
Wireless Card Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.10.91.21)
Current Wireless Network: wireless network not available

I have not used any of these dongles. Only question I can think of after a little reading is, did you click on the disconnect button in the software for the dongle before removing it from the machine?

Personally, after reading through the faqs and troubleshooting steps on the three mobile uk site, I'd have to recommend calling them for support.

And, if it were me, instead of going in and angrily demanding a refund, I'd start off by telling them what's happening and ask what I'm doing wrong. Let them figure out what it takes to make it work and how, then explain it to me. If they can't make it work either, now I've got a legitimate request to return the device.

More times than I can even begin to count in the last 30 years I've been using this high falutin' technology stuff, it's been one little box somewhere that needed checking or unchecking or some other little piddly thing that's not a big deal once you know about it.