WiFi and my mid 2012 MacBook Pro

[Jim Rillie]

Greetings, all

 

My MBP has been a workhorse for many tasks, but in the last year or so has been very sluggish in the WiFi department - losing signal, etc. 

To my tech mind, obviously an antenna problem, but Apple support has been skirting around the issue for months. 

Gurus at Apple store not able to find issues with their extreme in-store wifi,

advisors from Apple having me go back to Mavericks, and re install everything, no improvement.

I will keep digging away, but I do find my reasonable concerns and experience in the RF world are being ignored.

Is this a systemic Apple thing, or the problem with the whole tech world at this point?

Anyone else experiencing this?

My Q and D solution will be to buy a USB adapter and disable airport card, rather not and get it resolved.

 

Curmudgeonly yours,

Jim Rillie

Production Sound Mixer Elder (new category)

 

 

Had to go sit on the basement stairs to send the topic - no send in the living room chair several feet from router

 

[dela]

If you click on the WiFi icon in the top menu while holding down the Alt-key, you will get a reading of a range of parameters of your connection. You can check your RSSI (received signal strength); on my connection (with app. 5 m to my Airport Express base) I get a RSSI of -59 dBm.

 

If your RSSI is significantly lower, you might have a problem with either the WiFi card (easy to fix) or the antenna in the screen base (not easy to fix). It might still be a software problem, but in this way you can start by eliminating hardware issues...

[Johnny Karlsson]

I would think that if it works fine at the store, the problem might be with your WiFi router.

 

This may be completely unrelated, but here it goes:

Years ago, I would keep losing internet connection almost on a daily basis. After many calls to Time Warner  (and many months) call center in India “tech support “ - you know, going down their list: “is your computer turned on? Is it connected to the modem? Is the modem plugged in to power?....., finally someone determined that the modem was outdated and wasn’t compliant with their new specs and wasn’t able to handle the updated speed etc.  - the mind boggles as to why they couldn’t determine this right away, nor had notified me that I needed to exchange the modem for their newer compatible version to begin with... anyway, all problems went away once that modem was replaced.

[Jim Rillie]

Good thought, Johnny

 

But the modems in use are current Apple Time Capsule and the tower style  extreme. All other computers, phones, iPads in the area work very well indeed. Only my lonely MBP suffers.I recently attached a TP Link to a USB port, and it blows the internal system out of the water. Keeps connected all the time wherever I am in the house. Life goes on.

 

Jim

 

Yes, Dela,

my  RSSI is consistently much lower (option key on my computer)

Since doing this check on wifi, never seen it any where near -59dB, more like -76 at best about a meter away from router, often as low an RSSI as - 87 or nada.

Quite frequently, the Noise figure is greater than the signal. Airport card has been swapped with no improvement noted. It has to be antenna related, but Apple just won't admit it. Bizarre.

Jim

[dela]

It definitely sounds like an antenna problem... The annoying thing about that is that the antennas are built into the screen base, so they are not easily accessible... The antennas can be replaced without damaging the screen, but I don´t know if Apple supplies it as a separate spare part. So Apple may see replacing the entire screen as the only solution..

If you can find a scrapped screen, the antennas can be moved to your screen, it just takes a bit of finesse (and perhaps help from YouTube) to do it.

[soundchris]

Check this:

https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Mac/MacBook-Pro-15-Inch-Unibody-Early-2011-through-Mid-2012-Airport-Bluetooth-Cable/IF161-084-1

This is for a 2012 MBP unibody non glossy

 

 

[Jim Rillie]

Thanks, Chris,

 

This applies to the 15 inch MBP, same vintage as my 13 inch MBP. Worth a look anyway

 

Jim

 

[soundchris]

Hi Jim, I fixed a few things with the help of the iFixit guides. replaced memory, fans, dvd-burner, cables, harddrives. all the parts that can break after a while, i use my MBPs on average for 5 years and they are on set every day.

 

 

 

[Jim Rillie]

Thanks, Chris

[Jim Rillie]

Update

airport/Bluetooth cable replacement made no difference. Oh well, only $15 and was worth a try. not even worth sending it back.

Anyone need a functioning Bluetooth/airport cable? I have one for free...