Some Possible Fixes For OS X Yosemite’s WiFi Issues [UPDATED x2]
Now I am not the type to give up on any sort of problem that I am presented with. So I decided to continue to troubleshoot the WiFi issues with Yosemite to see if I can fix them in advance of Apple actually addressing the problem, which apparently they plan to do. Though they aren’t telling their users about it. In any case, I’m currently testing my MacBook Pro where I’ve applied a number of potential fixes to it to see if I have resolved the problem. The beauty of these fixes is that these can be done by anybody.
I’ll start from the easiest to the more involved fixes. The first two on my list are:
Both of the above should be the first things you do when you encounter a weird problem on your Mac. You’d be surprised what a PRAM reset or a System Management Controller reset will fix.
Next on the list is your WiFi router. These are some things that I would suggest:
- Setting one type of Wi-Fi mode on your router. For example on the 2.4 GHz band you should set it to B/G or G only and on the 5GHz band you should set it to N only, A/N or A only. Needless to say you might have to experiment a bit to find a setting that works for you.
- Reboot your Router. Though that isn’t going to be possible at your local Starbucks of course.
The next is a little more interesting. Try using a utility called Kext Utility to fix the permissions of the Kext files on your Mac. Kext files are essentially drivers for Mac OS X and if they’re messed up in some way, your Mac may not work properly. The utility is available here and here’s what you do.
- Open Kext Utility. Note, you might have to right click and choose open to get it to run because Gatekeeper might stop you from running this utility.
- Let it repair permissions, it will tell you when it’s done
- Reboot
The last thing to try is to adjust the permissions for your WiFi network password that your Mac stores as it my not have the right permissions. That was the fix to a WiFi issue from several years ago. Here’s what you need to do:
- Go to the Applications folder
- Go to the Other folder
- Open Keychain Access
- Go to System > {the name of your WiFi network} > Access Control
- Enter your password when prompted
- Check “allow all applications to access this item”
- Enter your password again when prompted
Now I’ve done all of these and so far I haven’t had a drop in WiFi. I need to do more testing, but it would take less than 10 minutes for WiFi to drop. So far it hasn’t happened and it’s been well over an hour since I started testing. I’ll report back on my success or failure as I continue to test things. If you try these, please post a comment and let me know what works for you.
UPDATE: Further tests show that I do not have any issues with WiFi. I’m not sure what specific item in this list fixed the issue. But clearly one of them has. I’d be interested to find out what works for you.
UPDATE #2: I am still having issues with WiFi, but they are less frequent. More info here.
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