AirPort "Connection Timeout" issue
It seems there is a glitch in the AirPort connection dialog (or underling software) in Leopard that will occasionally prevent you from connecting to a wireless access point with a "Connection Timeout" message (usually involving WEP, which is yet another reason to upgrade to WPA). While frustrating, if you find yourself in this situation there is a solution: open up Safari and click your way through the the Network Diagnostics Utility (a button to launch this appears when you launch Safari and it can't connect to the internet). This will successfully allow you to connect to the wireless access point (provided something else isn't wrong anyway). As usual, I'd assume that there will be permanent fix for this soon, but at least for now there is a work around.
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Thank you so much for this fix! We just got a new linksys router and I was so frustrated upon trying to connect it to our network using the built in airport issue, but your workaround surprised me by working instantly without any problem :)
Thanks for your help, and I hope Apple can fix all these bugs with the leopard wireless issues that users have been reporting :)
Comment by Kevin Tucker — January 12, 2008 @ 11:38 pm
[...] the very ugly… I can no longer find my WiFi network at work, not at all! In my last post I noted that there were issues connecting to the Fortinet FortiWiFi 50B at work. This was annoying, [...]
Pingback by beyondmac.com » Blog Archive » OS X 10.5.2 is here and it totally messes up my AirPort/WiFi! — February 12, 2008 @ 10:10 am
perfect…just what I was looking for. Thanks!
Comment by Chase — April 7, 2008 @ 3:49 am
Great fix. Thank you!
Comment by galo rossi — May 23, 2008 @ 9:49 pm
Didn't work for me… Other suggestions?
Comment by Anna — July 20, 2008 @ 9:41 am
Didn't work for me either. I just got the same ritual as through AirPort. It recognises the wireless router but asks for the WEP each time and then gives the 'Connection Timeout' message. Or 'Incompatible security'. Everything was fine until yesterday and two PCs are working off the same router.
Comment by Beric — August 10, 2008 @ 12:57 pm
Yeah, it worked after it gave some error that it was unable to connect. Amazing.
Thanks :)
Comment by Lucky — August 22, 2008 @ 2:40 am
Damn.. doesn't work anymore at all. Sucks
Comment by Lucky — August 22, 2008 @ 6:12 am
Unfortunately, there is no difference for me, still no connection. And I have no problems with connecting to a dozen of other wireless networks (at the some time I have no problems with connecting 4 PCs to the problematic AP).
Comment by Pawel — September 2, 2008 @ 8:49 am
Very strange indeed, but working for me too! So thanks from me also. I'm using WPA2 by the way, so WEP is not the cause.
Glad your site shows up first in Google when searching for 'connection timeout airport' :)
Cheers!
Comment by Albert van der Veen — September 17, 2008 @ 3:06 pm
I found unplugging the airport unit – waiting a few seconds and plugging it back in – helps. Airport found the connection without any problem. I experience this problem once or twice a month and have yet to find out what causes it.
Thanks for this site though.
Comment by William — November 30, 2008 @ 3:36 pm
Thank you. It didn't work through the Safari workaround but when I changed the Router to WPA, it finally connected. Thanks again.
Comment by Franco — December 7, 2008 @ 8:22 am
This fix simply does not work (not for all anyway). Can anyone kindly help me with another option?
I cannot find any fix that works other then re-installing the OS from scratch which i am loath to do and unsure it will help me…Help !!!
Comment by David — January 1, 2009 @ 5:42 am
I faced the 'connection timeout' issue on my intel core 2 duo macbook pro recently, using an airport extreme base station. In addition to my mbp, I also had a mac mini and a windows pc connecting to the base station. Everything worked fine, and then, seemingly out of the blue, the mbp couldn't find the base station, or if it could, it couldn't connect (and yet both the mini and the pc could!)….I tried everything — hard resetting the AEBS, changing WPA to WEP….I even goofed around with the network kernel files on my mbp until I sufficiently buggered things up and decided to completely reinstall OSX on the macbook pro (which also didn't work, btw)! Finally I found a solution which seems to work swimmingly, so I hope this fix will save some people out there a lot of precious time and frustration:
1) Open Airport Utility
2) Click on 'Manual Setup'
3) select the 'wireless' tab (at the top where you can choose from 'summary', 'base station', 'wireless', and 'access control')
4) On this screen, it allows you to select the channel. By default, the option here is set to 'automatic'. From the drop-down, I randomly selected a specific channel (in my particular case, I chose channel 7).
5) In the bottom right, click 'update'
6) TA-DA! Everything now appears to connect to the base station. You may have to play around with different channels, but so far, all 3 of my computers are able to communicate with the AEBS with no apparent problems. Hope this works for you!
Comment by Theo — May 1, 2009 @ 1:06 am
I ran into this problem with a two week old Macbook Pro today. Theo's fix above seems to have worked for me as well. Thanks!
Comment by James — May 23, 2009 @ 7:03 pm
Theo's solution worked for me too – i'd upgraded to 7.4.1 without problem and then decided to muck everything up by trying 802.11n 5ghz setting. I lost all wireless connectivity and resetting everything: hard, soft and inbetween did nothing. Wired connectivity was fine but my macs (and, interestingly, my macs ONLY – pcs had no trouble connecting) couldn't see the network and even when they could, got the timeout error. Finally I read Theo's fix – and it worked. Channel 7 as well. Crazy that the rescan doesn't seem to wheel through the channels. Thanks for a fascinating thread and a cure for my stupid messing about.
Comment by nick — June 11, 2009 @ 4:47 am
I have a macbook and an imac g4 and I continually had this problem with the macbook but never a problem with the imac until I found the above solution. I changed to channel 8 and all was right with the world. For a long time anyway, but I decided recently to upgrade the macbook hard drive to a larger one and ever since have had the problem all over again. Doh! So now I guess I'll have to try experimenting with other channels and see how it goes……
Comment by Phil — June 17, 2009 @ 2:45 pm
Didn't work for me. Very frustrating.
Comment by balls — July 9, 2009 @ 12:30 am
I had this problem and the Safari fix didn't work. After being frustrated with it for months, I finally changed my router settings to use WPA ( WPA-PSK) instead of WEP and now it works fine. I would highly recommend switching to WPA if oyu are facing this issue.
Comment by agrainofsalt — July 23, 2009 @ 4:23 am
Theo's comment #14 worked for me. I ended up using channel 3. This is with an Airport Extreme router. I have 6 other devices (windows PC, Airport Express, 2 TiVos, 2 iPhones) that all connect reliable to the router. My Macbook has been unreliable connecting for months.
Comment by Alan — August 14, 2009 @ 6:11 am
thanks so much help dude.
Comment by bobby — August 30, 2009 @ 3:29 pm
i've searched for tons of method and finally fixed the problem by Theo's comment! Thanks a lot… hv been frustrated for few days….. THANKS =)
Comment by sharon — September 9, 2009 @ 10:57 am
Trying to follow Theo's instruction but i'm unable to select "Manual Setup" in airport utility…it indicates that "AirPort utility was unable to find any Apple wireless devices" etc and won't allow me to click Manual Setup. Any advice??
Comment by april — September 17, 2009 @ 10:27 am
Theo's solution (#14) worked for me too, though interestingly, not with channels 1 or 3, but with 7. MacBook Pro 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. Thank you, Theo!!
Comment by Eliza — October 6, 2009 @ 4:15 pm
i'm having the same issue as April on #24. manual setup is grayed out because "AirPort utility was unable to find any Apple wireless devices”. my airport indicates i'm getting a signal from my modem but "AirPort has a self-assigned IP address and may not be able to connect to the Internet."
i have 2 other devices connected to this modem that are working fine. my iphone and macbook pro just started having issues today.
Comment by christina — October 7, 2009 @ 12:25 am
sorry i meant #23
Comment by christina — October 7, 2009 @ 12:25 am
I too find that my AirPort Utility is "unable to find any Apple wireless devices." Therefore Theo's fix (#14) is not an option. (The original fix post also does not work.)
This is infuriating and, I would also assume, inexplicable. WTH is Apple doing allowing such a prevalent issue go unfixed?!
Damn you, Apple computer. Damn you to hell.
Comment by nat — October 22, 2009 @ 10:53 pm
I am having the same problem as #23…anyone reading have any new advice?
Comment by efe — October 24, 2009 @ 11:02 am
same problem as 23. broadcom 43xx, intel core 2 duo. infuriating. additionally, trying to find a wireless USB dongle that works with intel, OSX and supports packet injection is virtually impossible i think. arg
Comment by jake — November 7, 2009 @ 12:24 pm
Hi,
Thanks for the tip Theo, it solved my problem.
For those of you who are not using an Apple Airport base station, you will need to use a slighly different method:
If you have another wireless device that will connect to the network (I used my iPhone), use that to log on to your base station control panel. Mostly this will be via a standard browser, entering an IP address into the address field. The IP address will be in your base station documentation, if you've lost this it may also be printed on the device itself.
Once logged on, look for 'Wireless Settings' and change the channel. Default on my Actiontec device was 9, I changed to 7 and it worked a treat.
For those who cannot connect wirelessly with another device, you will most likely have to patch directly into the base station with an ethernet cable, then follow the same steps as above.
Comment by Allen — November 9, 2009 @ 3:57 am
Thank you so much Allen! I was facing this stupid Connection TImeout error on my new Mac Book Pro – was driving me crazy. Followed your instructions, (also, for some people the term Wireless Router might be more easily understood than Base Station), changed the channel using my PC to channel 7.
I didn't quite believe it would work, but it did! Mac is now happily connected!
For anyone trying to access the settings of a BELKIN router, the address is: 192.168.2.1
Comment by Monica — November 20, 2009 @ 7:59 pm
Had the same problem come out of the blue. Restarting my router and MBP seemed to do the trick until it happens again.
Comment by Barry — January 15, 2010 @ 9:59 am
I found that there was a garbage WPA password and fixed that, but like several others, I can't get into Manua Setting, same problem as 24-28.
What is weird is that my wife's identical MacBook Pro has no problems. But then, she never upgraded past 10.4
Anybody found another solution? Right now, I'm working with an Ethernet connection, which is quite incovenient.
Bob
Comment by Bob — February 10, 2010 @ 3:58 pm
I also could not use the AirportUtility,since I have an AT&T Uverse router. However i went in and did two things. I changed the wifi channel to 7. Then I happened to notice that for some odd reason my MBP wifi card was on the list of restricted MAC addresses. I cleared that and whoala! I was back in business.
No idea why I had to do that all of sudden since everything had been working fine for me for almost a year.
Comment by David — March 23, 2010 @ 8:38 am
I have the same problem as #23. I've tried changing from WPA to WEP and that didn't work. My older MacBook Pro (leopard) is working just fine it's the snow leopard OS that won't connect. I have a 2WIRE router/modem and use AT&T. Any suggestions?
Comment by Pat — May 22, 2010 @ 5:30 pm
Hi guys – changing the channel worked for me. – it was hours of trying everything and i must say the channel change worked. i'm using a DLINK gamers lounge wireless router and a netgear modem.
Comment by tan — August 3, 2010 @ 12:58 am