Chaosboy

Hey all,

For about a month now I've been having some trouble connecting to the internet with my MacBook and while I consider myself relatively computer savvy (certainly more so than your average joe) I'm bloody stumped. I'm running an almost brand new (2 months old) MacBook with OS X 10.4, and perhaps it's my transition to an apple that's leaving me so confused, but I'm not sure.

Anyhow, the problem is this: I use wireless in my home to connect to the network, and it works just fine on every laptop in the house save for my MacBook. It was working beautifully for the first month or so that I had it, and all of the sudden, my internet connection would start going in an out.
For example, when I open up Firefox or Safari, in most cases my home page will load. As well, any browsing I do within that site usually works as well. If I try to change sites however, it just takes forever to load and eventually times out. I have found by trial and error that when I have those elongated load times and times out happening (Which is constantly), if I go to my system preferences > network area and Renew DHCP Lease, the website will load all of the sudden, but I'll have to do it again and again every time I change websites, even sometimes within the same site. It's INCREDIBLY frustrating.

Also of note is that if I'm downloading anything during this time, the download's constantly work. It's never as if the connection actually DROPS. Airport (98% of the time) shows that I have fully connectivity to my network, it just doesn't reflect it when I browse. But again, anything I might be downloading, be it a torrent, on a p2p network, or just a file downloading through firefox, that always works, regardless of my renewing the DHCP lease. It never seems to time out.

I'm at my wits end with this problem, and I'm sincerely hoping someone here can help me out.

Thanks in advance folks.

Cheers
--Chris

npjester

check updates your updates and let me know what version of 10.4 you are on. and if you got your machine two months, did it have a leopard disc in the box? but yeah, lemme know what version of tiger you are on.

Chaosboy

npjester,

I am running OS X 10.4.11 , and the model identifier of my laptop is a MacBook 2.1. As to your question about Leopard, no it did not come with a Leopard CD or Leopard pre-installed. Just 10.4 Tiger. I've been wanting to purchase Leopard, but I've yet to do so, and I got the Mac a little under a month before Leopard was released. Hope that helps!

alt

Sounds like its still under warranty, take it to the "geniuses". It was working before, now it isn't working...seems like a problem with the card to me! Just based on my experience with OSX.

sinclair_tm

I'd check to make sure the card is completely connected. I had a problem like this on an iBook, only discover that my antenna wire wasn't fully plugged in.

alt

If you don't know, Macbooks are way MORE FUN to take apart then the ibooks....not to mention it voids the warranty.

Chaosboy

I'm not quite sure if opening it up is quite the solution at this point, especially because I'm not really that experienced with working on laptops and I certainly don't need to go voiding the warranty I spent an extra 70 bucks to extend.

However, I forgot to mention something. For whatever reason, this problem generally only seems to occur when I'm at my house, using my network, or even if I try and pick up one of my neighbours networks, most of which are insecure. When I have taken my laptop to school or to my girlfriends house (both a fair distance away from my house) and connected to their respective networks, I don't have this problem of having to renew the DHCP lease. Yet I don't have internet connectivity problems with the other computers in my house using wireless, only my MacBook. That further complicates the issue as far as I'm concerned, and that's why I'm so utterly confused. Help?

npjester

if you purchased it after october first, you can get leopard for 10 bucks, apple.com/macosx/uptodate is the url i believe, as for the issue with the airport take it to your local genius bar, have them take a look at it. could be the card or the antennas connected to it.

just read your last post...
whats your wireless router, what is theirs if you know, and what encryption are you using?

beigebandana

If the problem occurs only at your home, I doubt it's anything to do with the computer hardware itself. Question for you: I know you say your other computers work fine in your home, do you generally use the Macbook in a different area of the house than the other computers?

The other thing I question: does this only happen when you are downloading torrents? I had a similar issue when I was using torrents.

Stephen.Manning

npjester

I am running OSX 10.4.11 identifier 3.1 and I had a similar problem a while ago and found that it was with the ISP connection manager. Bad news; it took 6 weeks to rectify, but what did it was an update from the ISP for the connection manager software. The software was written specifically for Mac's.

Cheers