Mac Forum / General / Networking / December 2004

I am helping two friends, one with an iMac, 10.3.5, and the other with
an iBook, 10.2.X who have problems with their computer forgetting their
airport (WEP) password on awakening. The often connect to some random
network in the neighborhood at lower strength, and on the wrong subnet.

In both cases the preferred wireless networks are "hidden" in the sense
that you have to choose "other" in the network System preferences and
type in both a network name and password.

In both cases, my powerbook, using 10.3.X (now 7, but worked fine before
too) connects automatically with no problems. The iMac used to connect
fine with no problems.

I've tried
  a) Creating new locations with the network selected as preferred.
Using the "automatic" setting with the airport network set as preferred.
  b) turning off other network interfaces. Airport is the first network
in the list, and the only other one is modem.
  c) Deleting
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences.pl
ist and NetworkInterfaces.plist.
  d) Using Keychain repair. But note that the airport network password
is NOT stored in the keychain as far as I can tell.
  e)Repairing preferences.
  f) Locking the network preferences.

d) and e) where suggested in a former comp.sys.mac.com thread. So far
nothing has helped.

After doing c), the iMac keeps claiming that the password is wrong when
it is awakened, even though simply switching locations (not retyping the
password) will often get it to connect.

It is interesting that the iMac seems to get the airport on log-in and
reboot, but not on awakening. This may be true with the iBook too, I'm
not sure.

I'm at a loss as to what to try next. Does anyone have any ideas?