OS X and WPA Issues

Jan 22, 2007

So with the update to 10.4.8 many people noticed that they had issues connecting to wireless access points with WPA security enabled, myself included. We have a Netgear WGR614v6 that’s actually pretty nice, but suffers from the same issue every once in awhile.

Here’s a solution I found that seems to work pretty well.

  1. Curse at your Mac several times.
  2. Go to /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/
  3. Delete com.apple.airport.perferences.plist
  4. Reboot and try to connect to the wireless access point with WPA

I’m not sure why OS X just goes wonky sometimes, and this may not work all the time. I actually returned a Linksys wireless router for this very reason and went with Netgear instead. I’m sure it’s a combination of the router manufactures developing their software for Windows first, and Apple well, just being stupid. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Mac, but sometimes it barfs and I sent bad looks in the general direction of Cupertino.