Chosen Solution
Hey guys, I bought a used MacBook Air 1304 (Mid 2009 I believe) and changed the HDD for an SSD. For 4 weeks, I could use the laptop perfectly fine, everything worked great. But then one day the Wifi stopped working. If I try to connect my macbook to a wifi, it freezes and reboots, often it gets stuck in a boot loop. I suppose that this is not a software issue since I didn’t find the exact same issue on the internet and tried all the solutions I could find. Nothing worked. When I opened the Macbook the very first time, I realised that a small cable running next to the harddrive was damaged and squeezed in two different areas. You can see the cable on the two images (http://imgur.com/a/5p3TO) My question is: would it make sense to change that cable, does it have something to do with the wifi connection? and if yes, where can I get the cable and how do I change it? The broken cable seems to be the most obvious reason for the issue… I would be so grateful for helpful answers!!!! :-)
The cable you are pointing to is the microphone cable which enters into the lid on the Left. The WiFi and BlueTooth antennas are routed though the right. Review this IFIXIT guide: MacBook Air Models A1237 and A1304 Display Assembly Replacement Jump down to Step 9 where you can see it more clearly. Lets try this: Using the guide as reference locate the microphone connector on the logic board (Step 19). Disconnect it and see if your system work correctly connecting to WiFi. Let us know what you find. Update (04/18/2016) With that new symptom we maybe going down the wrong pathway here. Lets try this do you have a USB thumb drive you can prep up as a bootable drive? You’ll need to remove the FAT partition using Disk Utility and then create a GUID partition map and ac OS Extended (Journaled) partition. Then use the OS installer from the Apps Store to install the OS onto the Thumb drive. Once done boot up with the Thumb drive and use Disk Utility from it to check your internal drive. Run both repair permissions and repair disk.
When you open the WiFi application can it see your wireless network at all? And if it can does it see other networks in the area. Specifically if you use a smart phone and your laptop can the both see the same list of networks available? My MACBook Pro see’s way more network than my smartphone which means the MACBook has better reception. Also when you try to connect to your network do you have a password? You should and you should have to enter it as it should be character sensitive so be sure to spell it correctly. If your wireless card is good then it should connect. If you do not see any other networks then maybe your antenna is disconnected or broken. Because many receivers can still see close networks even with a broken antenna.
