Home Forums Networks & Cross-Platform Networking My computer keeps forgetting its network

Several years ago when I got my Linksys WRT54G wireless router, I set up the security for WPA2-personal, and I disabled the SSID broadcast, just for a bit of added security. Everything worked fine until one of my relatives visited, and couldn't connect to the network with her laptop running some ancient version of Windows. So, I changed the router security to WEP and she was able to connect.

Due to laziness, I left it set that way until a couple of days ago when I came across an article that pointed out that WEP has been seriously cracked and is equivalent to no security at all. So, I changed the security back to WPA2-personal, and all was fine until the next time I started up my computer. It didn't automatically log into the network. I had to go to the Network Preferences control panel and go through the "Join other network..." procedure, entering the network name and password. And yes, I did click the "Remember this network" checkbox, but to no avail. Every time I start up the computer, I have to go through this procedure to connect to the network. Just wondering if there is some preferences file that may need to be deleted somewhere.

Running OSX 10.5.8 (yes I know I need to upgrade, if only I could connect to the app store, sigh).

I've seen this happen if you change the type of security on a network but keep the name the same.

The quick fix is to change the router's SSID. The ight solution is to use keychain access (it's in the utilities folder in your applications folder) to delete the stored password for the network.

Thanks for the suggestions.

It was easiest just to delete the saved passwords from the keychain, but that didn't work. So, I tried changing the SSID on the router, and unfortunately that didn't work either. Finally, I just turned SSID broadcast back on, and now it's automatically logging in when I boot the computer. I'm pretty sure that it used to find the network and log in with SSID broadcast disabled, back when I originally bought the router, but maybe some recent system update broke it.

I bet just turning the router off and on might have made the big difference. About every 3-4 weeks the wireless devices in our setup (iDevices, printer) forget how to automatically log into the network. I turn the router off, wait, then on, and everything is back to connecting fine.

If there is something else going on, I sure would like to know.

It hadn't occurred to me to cycle the power to the router. Though I've noticed over the past year that it occasionally acts a bit flaky, losing connections etc., and cycling the power does correct those problems. So I just tried it now. Unfortunately, it didn't help with this one.

As it stands now, as long as SSID broadcast is enabled, my computer will find the network and log in. If SSID broadcast is disabled, my computer apparently doesn't make any attempt to find it even though I checked the "Remember this network" check box.

Most wifi router-specific problems can be fixed by turning airport off, and opening keychain access and finding and removing saved entries for them in BOTH your keychain and the system keychain.

In extremely rare instances I have had to also delete the airport interface in network preferences and re-add it.