No hardware installed wifi after automatic update

Dear all,

I'm using a mid 2012 macbook pro (MacBookPro9,1) with OSX 10.8.5 (cannot update due to compatibility issues for work).

This morning after the christmas break i turned on my macbook which performed an automatic update over wireless. In the notification centre it says "your computer will restart to complete these updates" and is timestamped 3 hours ago.

Almost immediately the wifi started to become unresponsive (first no connection then no responding to being switched off or on in the menu bar).

After a restart the wifi symbol is greyed out an reads "wi-fi: No hardware installed".

Further compounding the problem is that I cannot connect to the internet at all as despite an apparently functioning ethernet connection (green light at top of list in network settings with a properly assigned ip having renewed the DHCP license) no connection can be achieved with all attempts timing out.

All this is absolutely new behaviour and i have confirmed it is not my internet connection or router which are behaving normally for other devices.

I have tried:
Resetting NVRAM
Resetting SMC
Attempting to remove and add the connection instance in network settings (there is no option to add wifi again)

Resetting NVRAM worked ONCE for about 2 minutes, but now makes no difference.

What should I do?

Many thanks,

R.

So other devices can get through the router to the internet successfully? Until your statement

All this is absolutely new behaviour and i have confirmed it is not my internet connection or router which are behaving normally for other devices.

Click to expand...

I was thinking that your modem to the internet had failed, or the ISP wasn't connecting. You have connections to the router, but not to the internet, which 90% of the time is ISP related.

Yes, the router and ISP are fine, I am posting with that internet connection now.

What got updated in the automatic update? (BTW, I don't allow automatic updates. I prefer to see first what is going to happen. The only recent update applied automatically was Apple's update to the time protocol to patch a severe security link. Apple didn't let you have the choice, the update just applied itself. But that has nothing to do with networking.)

One thing to try is to delete the WiFi interface and recreate it from scratch. Won't hurt, could help.

Unfortunately I cant seem to find out the contents of the update (cant connect to the app store) and i would agree re auto updates, im fairly sure that is my preference (last time i looked there were a list of queued updates) i dont think i had any choice, but could be wrong...

The problem i seem to have is the unpredictability of the whole thing.

For instance, I reset SMC and NVRAM again and it worked again briefly (this has only worked twice out of many attempts), but this has allowed me to note two things

1) deleting then reinstating the wifi interface doesn't help (note: i cannot recreate it when the wifi fails with the greyed out no hardware installed message, the option disappears)

2) the order of the failure is this
A) wi fi works
B) internet connection times out/drops (the symbol indicates connection but no network is actually selected)
C) attempting to connect to network results in an OS delivered error "connection timeout"
D) wifi interface unresponsive: doesnt respond to off or on instructions
E) after reboot is greyed out and indicates no installed hardware

R.

Looking here Apple security updates - Apple Support it would seem that it has to be the osx ntp security update; i can confirm that that update has been applied to my machine by following the link and testing the version with the given terminal command.

Could the software update be a red herring? It seems so unlikely given the timing.

No, not a red herring (or any other color). I have the update, I have WiFi and it all works just fine. Your description sounds like the WiFi hardware is failing in the MBP. Do you have AppleCare?

While we work on it, what router? What ISP? I still don't think a router/isp failure is eliminated yet.

Problem solved - MacBook Air 2011 - Yosemite - WiFi (No hardware installed)

It had been 3 months since I was facing the problem. WiFi icon grayed and crossed out on the status bar; no dropdown-value for 'new network interface'; no drop-down value to select wifi under 'network services' list.

I tried resetting the SMC and NVRAM...didn't work. I couldn't even find my 'system preferences' folder that a lot of forums talked about (God help me with that).

Naturally, I couldn't connect to the internet (or I was too lazy). Fortunately, yesterday I plugged in my ethernet cable and saw that the AppStore had a bundle of System Updates for Yosemite (2.65 Gb).

It took a long time to download BUT... after I was done and the system had restarted 4-5 times, the magic happened! I could again see 'WiFi' in the 'Interface' dropdown under Network!

Now, I dunno whether Apple had provided a fix within those updates and whether this would work for everyone or not; but this is worth a try. Go ahead. And let me know if it works for you too.

Cheers!

I know its coincidental considering the update but the only time I have seen that notification was on a dropped MBP where the network card was damaged.
Try using the Setup Assistant to create a new connection for your ethernet connection.
If that works you have a damaged WiFi circuit.

@bluesourav:

Welcome to the Mac-Forums.

Please do not cross post or double post the same reply to two different threads. Thanks.