Mac modem help

gazzer82

Hmm, it sounds to me like the network port on your imac may be feeling a little unwell. As a final test, try plugging the same cable between your imac and your PC Laptop and see if the connection changes from disconnected to something else.

If you go into System Preferences, Network, you should see it's little status light go Green/Orange instead of red. You won't get any internet, but it's a pretty definitive way of checking it's the mac thats a fault.

If it remains red i think you need to contact Applecare and get them to sort it for you. Thankfully apple are usually very good at this kind of stuff so you should be ok.

I would suggest however that before you let them take it away that you backup any documents and files from the machine as it may well come back blank.

The easiest way to do this is to plug in a fresh external HD, you should get a window that pops up asking if you wish to use the device for Time Machine backups, choose yes, and you should see a little time-machine icon appear on the bar top-right near the airport one, it will let you know the status of the backup.

One it's complete, you can eject the drive and keep it somewhere safe. If the computer does come back blank, just plug the drive back in and choose to restore from time machine backup and it will put all your files and settings back as they where.

Cheers

Gareth

shopbot

The good news is I've finally got it working!

I followed gazzer82's advice and plugged the ethernet cable between the iMac and laptop. Nothing changed in system preferences.

In one of my posts I mentioned that I had changed the supplied Netgear cable for a longer one from Amazon. I used this to connect the two instead and the light in System Preferences did change to amber.

What I've now done is move my furniture around so I can use short Netgear cable and everything works fine...I've rebooted iMac and router and it works after that as well.

I'm not sure why the Amazon cable works on the laptop and not the iMac but I'm just relieved that I don't have a faulty iMac.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread - it's much appreciated.

SB

almillar

I have a Netgear router that has 'weak' LAN ports, giving symtoms similar to those you describe. I've got a LAN connection between my living room and 'study' upstairs, and suddenly found that my PS3, XBox360, PC, MacMini were all having problems (generally not connecting, but on the computers, I would sometimes get half loaded pages, showing that it was sometimes working 'a bit'). Different router has solved the probelm, and I won't be buying Netgear again in a hurry!

gazzer82

Glad everything is working now for you. Networking can be a bit of a dark art at times!

Mac's do quite a lot of auto-sensing when you connect a cable to them, both of cable type and link speed e.t.c so it may just be that one of these test is failing due to the cable length or a defect in the cable.

That said, i have quite happily run a Mac Pro on a network cable over 100m before with no issues.

Cheers

Gareth