Mac Troubleshooting: Spotty Internet? One Quick Solution

by AJ George

I use Parallels on my iMac with Lion OS X and Windows XP. Generaly speaking, my setup works very well. However, last week my computer was giving me headaches. I could start applications, do my work and send and receive email. However, I could not reliably access the internet.

Webpages would only load after being refreshed 3-5 times, or not at all. Streaming would stop playing right in the middle.

I tried wireless and Ethernet internet connections. I tried Safari and Chrome on the Mac side, Internet Explorer on the Windows side. Nothing seemed to resolve the issue.

Luckily, we have Apple Care so I was able to get some assistance direct from an Apple tech. Here is the simple solution I was given that I thought I would pass along.

1. From the Apple menu, choose Go > Computer.
2. Double-click Macintosh HD.
3. Open the Library folder.
4. Open the Preferences folder.
5. Find the SystemConfiguration folder and drag it to the trash.
6. Restart the computer.

Apparently it is not uncommon for network preferences to become corrupt. Throwing the SystemConfiguration folder away (it will automatically regenerate itself after you restart the computer) is a quick solution.

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About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Communicator and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials."

Comments

[VHOTraining.com]

Sounds like a pretty simple solution, unless you run into the same problem on Windows PC. I just had the very same issue using Windows 7 and I finally tracked it down to a JAVA update. After I ran the java update it totally crashed the network preferences. It was a very frustrating issue and I finally had restore the OS from a previous system backup.