MacBook Pro and WiFi connection issues

Help! Apologies in advance for the long post but I figure providing lots of background might help you see the daft thing I am (not) doing.

Summary of problem - MacBook Pro will not log on to my wifi after sleep or switch on. Repeatedly reports incorrect password. After repeated tries (random number but never <5), it will eventually work and stay connected until I switch off/sleep. This problem does not happen with either my Windows 7 laptop, iPhone, Android phone or games consoles - they all switch on - log on automatically without any requirement to re-enter wifi password.

Background - I have just changed routers. Until recently I had an ancient router with separate wireless adapter. Ancient router went pop last week. Until the old router died, I had no problems connecting to wifi. About a year ago I was sent a new wireless router, but I didn't use it because when I tried swapping over to it - it was doing this with the MacBook. The new wireless router is a Thomson TG585.

I work from home and internet (and router) are provided by work - as work laptop is connecting fine, I am not getting any help from them.

Things I have changed with the router trying to resolve this
- password
- Changed to WPA, then WPA + WPA-2 and then back to WPA-2 (as it originally was)
- I have also threatened to kill it, this didn't make any difference so I have reset it a number of times instead

Things I have changed on the MacBook
- added a new location
- Set service order so wifi is at the top
- made all other services inactive (ethernet, bluetooth etc)

The MacBook is still connecting automatically to a friend's wifi.

Just to add, when I set the new router (via the MacBook), I did not need to re-enter passwords etc on any of the other devices - they just carried on working with it (apart from when I decided I had clearly lost the ability to type in my 15 character password and decided to go with a 6 character one to be absolutely sure I could not be mistyping).

Thanks in advance

Definitely a bit of a bizarre problem. Not familiar with the Thomson (never heard of that brand at all actually) - but there is a distinct school of thought that exists online which says certain brands don't play well with Macs - why? I haven't a clue.

I'm not sure that there's much else to suggest to you - as what you've done thus far seems pretty logical - including threatening to kill the router. I'd suggest you take that threat one step further and take it back and get a brand name that people have heard of.

For testing purposes - if you remove the need for a password and disable security altogether - does it connect on the first try? I'm guessing you're in the UK and there have been instances of slightly different interpretations of the 802.11 specs causing issues over there.

Yup - you are right that I am in the UK - I wonder what gave me away??? I am, however, delighted to find out that I am not daft!

I shall carry out my threat to kill the router and stump up for a new router.

Thanks

SwabianMrs said:

Yup - you are right that I am in the UK - I wonder what gave me away??? I am, however, delighted to find out that I am not daft!

I shall carry out my threat to kill the router and stump up for a new router.

Thanks

Click to expand...

I know it's more expensive but going to the Apple Store and buying an Airport base station will alleviate all your headaches. Plus they look great, work amazingly well, and integrate perfectly into a Mac (or Mac/PC) environment.

Good luck!

kittonian said:

I know it's more expensive but going to the Apple Store and buying an Airport base station will alleviate all your headaches. Plus they look great, work amazingly well, and integrate perfectly into a Mac (or Mac/PC) environment.

Good luck!

Click to expand...

What he said.

I have recently had connection problems myself, however they were a little different from yours. My safari would stop responding, basically slow to crawl when loading pages, while Transmission was open and there was a download in progress. Even after I limited the bandwidth that transmission was allowed to consume, it made no difference. I came across this webpage that listed a number of fixes to all connection problems. I skipped over the basic ones and deleting the com.apple.internetconfig files along with a power cycle of my modem and router seemed to do the trick for now.

Check this out and see if any of these things help you.

I have had a couple of weird quirky problems since switching to Lion. So far, I have seem to be able to find livable work arounds, however, things are not the way I would prefer, they are just they way they NEED to be to work I suppose. I personally find the "sleep/freezing" problem most annoying.

I have this exact same problem too. 2009 MacBook Pro that's never had this kind of issue, and I upgraded to Lion on launch. I feel like it started after the 10.7.1 update. When I open my MacBook from sleep, sometimes it'll connect to my wireless and sometimes it'll tell me my password is incorrect. Phones/Consoles/iPad all connect fine.

I've removed the connections and readded them, tried running WiFi Diagnostics, tried restarting some services, but so far I haven't discovered a way to get connected again other than a reboot. The next time it happens, I'll try entering the password 5+ times, because at least that's better than a reboot.

The only workaround that has seemed to solved the issue was to disable any type of password protection. (i.e. I no longer type a password at startup, after sleep etc. Enable automatic login) Like I said, not ideal, but livable for me because my computer stays in my home.

MacBook Pro/Thomson TG585 password problem

I have exactly the same problem with my MacBook Pro refusing to accept the password for my Thomson TG585 only after sleep. It logs on perfectly happily every time I restart or turn on (as does my iPhone, iPad and Apple TV). It only happens after sleep - it always eventually accepts the password after a random number of tries, sometimes 10, sometimes 100!

I've tried everything above except for giving up and buying a new router. If anyone has any advice I would really appreciate it as it's driving me mad.