[skkleinman@gmail.com]

Okay, I recently returned to the world of Mac and suddenly my new (to me) Mac Mini appears possessed. It's got built in wireless and connects to my wireless network at home just fine. But the past few days, at about 3:30 p.m. every day, it suddenly disconnects. Then, when I click on the Airport icon at the top of the screen, it doesn't give me the choice to connect to my network. I've done the disable/enable route and upon enabling Airport again - still no network detected. It's not until I restart the computer that it picks up my home network again. And it's not a router problem because my PC that also runs wireless works just fine throughout the whole process.

Any thoughts at all would be GREATLY appreciated.

-Seth

[dowNNshift]

At first glance, it sounds to me like a DHCP issue if it happens at the same time every day.

What brand wireless router are you connecting to? Do you have password protection (WEP or WPA) enabled? Have you used a widget to see if any of your neighboring wireless networks are using the same channel (frequency), resulting in interference and connection conflicts.

Lastly, which version of Mac OS X are you running -- there is a known AirPort hiccup in 10.4.8 with Yonah Core Duo Intel Macs. If that's the case, update to 10.4.9 or 10.4.10.

[dowNNshift]

Oh, also if AirPort wireless is your primary means of connecting to your LAN, check in System Preferences >> Network >> Network Port Configurations to see that AirPort is dragged to the top of the list. This ensures that AirPort is given priority over Ethernet, Bluetooth, and FireWire.

While you're in there, it never hurts to make a new Location -- disable all nodes except AirPort, drag AirPort to the top of the list, then in AirPort Configuration set your wireless network as preferred.