"Wow, that's got to be a frustrating one. Do you know for a fact that your replacement Airport card is a known-good one? I ask because many eBay sellers sell parts without testing them, even though they may state ""tested"". Unfortunately many sellers just figure it's worth saving the time required to thoroughly test everything, and put up with a return every once in a while. Probably one in three spare parts I've bought on eBay has been bad.
I don't think it's the Airport cables, because if they were bad it shouldn't cause the Airport to not show installed at all. And you've wiped the OS, so you know it's not that. It all points to the Airport card itself, or possibly the other card underneath (I don't personally have experience with that one)."
"If I have this correct the card that the airport plugs into is an I/O card, I think it has all the external ports on it including the magsafe (ties in with may crash faster when on mains). Therefore the hardware chain is airport card into I/O card into logic board. Before spending anymore money I would try the following:
-Reset PRAM - power on and then hold command-option-P-R wait until you have heard the boot chime a couple of times, it would also do not harm to reset the SMC pop battery out and unplug from mains and then hold power button down for 10 seconds, I am not sure if this ties in with airport or not but as magsafe and airport card are on the same board I am guessing.
-Retest to see if problem still present.
-Reinstall OS and apply all updates, at this point I would not install any other apps, not clear from above if you did or not.
-Retest.
-Next I would open up the unit and disconnect and reconnect all the cables relating to the hardware, so that would be the the airport card into the slot and the connector between the I/O board and the logic board. I also get a can of compressed air and blow all connectors just to be on safe side.
-put it all back together and you guessed, retest.
If you suspect heat download a monitor app to see if it shows the machine getting warm, I like iStat for this sort of thing. The other thing is to try and note times when you start and times of failure to see if it is the same length or varying. It will help with knowing if you have fixed it.
If none of the above work replace hardware, starting with airport card (which as long as it was from a reputable source should be OK so not really the next thing as already done), so then the I/O board, if that does not work you are looking at a logic board which is expensive."
"I had exactly the same problem as stated above. Also tried the reset steps without success. But I have possible cause and a solution.
I opened up my MacBook Pro 17 and started it up with the keyboard lifted off. While pinging in a terminal window I could see that the connection was dropped when I applied slight pressure with my fingertip on the airport card. The airport card also disappeared from my system so I had produced the same fault as I experienced before.
When doing this I could also hear some electrical squeaking noises. I disconnected the antennas, unscrewed and reseated the airport card. (The yellow tape is difficult to remove, I cut it in half on the spot to be able to reseat the card)
When examining the keyboard I could see that it had a slight bend in it downwards toward the motherboard and that was probably causing me to apply pressure on the airport card when I rested my hands on the keyboard to type, or, sometimes even by itself.
When putting the keyboard back on, I made a slight bend in it backwards especially around the area of the airport card to get some more space between there.
It is now running without any problems, and I make sure not to lift the computer with only the one hand on the airport card side."
You're right, the airport is plugged into I/O card. I've already done all things you said: I've reseted the PRAM, reinstalled the OS many and many times and also tried new Snow Leopard OS that I'm still using, also cleaned with compressed air and disconnected and reconnected the airport card and the I/O card too. Now I'm trying new airport update downloaded two days ago and testing if the problem persist. I've also installed iStat to monitor the airport temperature.
There are no special conditions for the airport crash, the length of time is varies each time and the program I'm using when it goes down is different every time.
I've already replaced the airport card and the problem persist. With the first airport card, the mac was fine, maybe till I've done an upgrade, and then the airport stopped working, so I've decided to replace it and with the new card will have the problems described above.
for rdklincorporated:
When I bought the new airport card I've checked if the Apple's seal of approval was intact and it was so I hope that the card was new when I bought it.
I really don't know whether to buy the new I/O card ($100) and try it, cause if the problem persist with this new one card I would have thrown $100 into trash' cause it's difficult to resell this card on eBay or any other site :(
Thank you for answers guys.
PS: Now the airport temperature is 43°C and has just crashed"
