Macos – Macbook Air WIFI not working after wake up

I have a late 2010 13" Macbook Air and I have problems turning Wi-Fi on when I wake the computer up.

I keep my laptop connected to power, an external screen and a USB ethernet adapter at home and thus turn Wi-Fi off. When I put the computer to sleep in this state, disconnect the cabels and later wake it up I have problems turning Wi-Fi on again.

As an example, one morning when I woke the computer up at school after being asleep all night I could not enable Wi-Fi. When I pressed "Turn Wi-Fi On" in the menu bar it didn't react at all, the symbol still indicate it is turned off (an outlined fan symbol without any of the "radio waves" in it) and no Wi-Fi networks are visible in the drop down menu.

I ran the following commands to get some debug output

$ /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport en0 debug +AllDriver +AllVendor
$ /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport en0 logger

then I ran the following commands in another terminal

$ networksetup -setairportpower en0 off
$ networksetup -setairportpower en0 on

and got the folowing from the above airport en0 logger command

Wed Sep  4 08:40:05: <kernel> en0: setting diversity to: -1
Wed Sep  4 08:40:05: <kernel> en0: Error configuring antenna diversity (index = -1).
Wed Sep  4 08:40:05: <kernel> en0: setting tx antenna: -1
Wed Sep  4 08:40:05: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from pid 33764 ().
Wed Sep  4 08:40:05: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for pid 33764.
Wed Sep  4 08:40:06: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::startScanMultiple: Scan request received from pid 33922 (16 SSIDs, 0 BSSIDs).
Wed Sep  4 08:40:06: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::startScanMultiple: Initiating scan.
Wed Sep  4 08:40:06: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from pid 33764 ().
Wed Sep  4 08:40:06: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for pid 33764.
Wed Sep  4 08:40:06: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from pid 33764 ().
Wed Sep  4 08:40:06: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for pid 33764.
Wed Sep  4 08:40:06: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::startScan: Broadcast scan request received from pid 33764 ().
Wed Sep  4 08:40:06: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for pid 33764.
Wed Sep  4 08:40:06: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for pid 33922.
Wed Sep  4 08:40:06: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::startScanMultiple: Scan request received from pid 33922 (16 SSIDs, 0 BSSIDs).
Wed Sep  4 08:40:06: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::startScanMultiple: Initiating scan.
Wed Sep  4 08:40:08: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for pid 33922.
Wed Sep  4 08:40:08: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::startScanMultiple: Scan request received from pid 33922 (2 SSIDs, 0 BSSIDs).
Wed Sep  4 08:40:08: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::startScanMultiple: Initiating scan.
Wed Sep  4 08:40:09: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for pid 33922.
Wed Sep  4 08:40:09: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::startScanMultiple: Scan request received from pid 33922 (2 SSIDs, 0 BSSIDs).
Wed Sep  4 08:40:09: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::startScanMultiple: Initiating scan.
Wed Sep  4 08:40:11: <kernel> IO80211ScanManager::getScanResult: All scan results returned for pid 33922.

Here something interesting happens. After running the above networksetup command, the Wi-Fi icon in the menu bar starts the "searching for networks" animation and indicates that Wi-Fi is indeed turned on. However, it does not connect to any network (there is one in range that it should auto connect to) and I see no networks in the list.

After I reboot my computer it is always back to normal with no Wi-Fi problems what so ever but I wish I didn't have to reboot every time this happens.

Any ideas at all?

Update

I've been asked if this has been solved. As it is now, however, I cannot reliably answer that question as I haven't been using that computer much lately, at least not for this use case. I do however seem to remember that it worked out better after I updated to Mavericks, but I am not sure. Sorry folks.