Macbook Pro won’t connect to internet via Wi-Fi or ethernet

internetwifi

Macbook Pro 2011 A1278 13"
OS X 10.9.5

I cannot connect to Wi-Fi, the Wi-Fi symbol in the top right has a cross through it and when i click it says "Wi-Fi: No hardware installed". I've tried connecting to the internet via ethernet, when I plug in the ethernet cable it says connected under "network" but the internet doesn't work – pages won't load in safari, app store won't connect etc.

I've tried resetting the NVRAM and SMC.

Thanks.

Update: The wi-fi problem was fixed by replacing the cable between the airport card and the motherboard. The ethernet was fixed by deleting the connection under system preferences > network and adding it again.

Best Answer

The error message that macOS/OS X supplies is the key:

the Wi-Fi symbol in the top right has a cross through it and when i click it says "Wi-Fi: No hardware installed"

It simply cannot find it to configure it. Unfortunately, there's not a VRAM or setting file that will fix a failed board. An SMC reset won't have any effect because it's connected via the PCI bus which means if the SMC was failing, pretty much everything else on your MBP would be failing; the SMC controls power delivery to the whole PCI bus, not just individual parts.

The good news is that its fairly inexpensive and something you can repair yourself (Apple PN# 661-5867)

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Ifixit.com has an excellent step-by-step tutorial with pictures that walk you through the replacement. They even sell the plastic spudger tools shown in the example. With a little patience and time, you can fix this without having to incur massive costs from a repair shop.

As for your Ethernet, that's technically a completely different issue; it's different hardware altogether but still part of the PCI bus (this is why SMC reset has no effect). When the OS reports back that it's "connected" it's saying that it has "found and made a connection."

To verify this, type ifconfig en0 and you should get something similar to this (your's will have different values):

en0: flags=8963<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        options=10b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_HWTAGGING,AV>
        ether a8:20:44:18:3b:2d 
        inet 192.168.1.13 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
        nd6 options=1<PERFORMNUD>
        media: autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex,flow-control,energy-efficient-ethernet>)
        status: active

The important value here is inet. If you don't get a valid IP address, it just means that DHCP didn't assign you one. A reboot will usually fix the issue.

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