Fixing “No Network Card Installed” on a Mac

This was a particular pain in the arse for me and caused me no end of grief! Hopefully this post will help some of you in a similar situation.

At the time of writing this fix works on a MacBook Pro 15 inch running Mac OS X 10.5.2.

Looking at some other posts around there were a number of potential causes and fixes. I tried them all and found one that worked. I have compiled a list of these different methods though, so hopefully one will work for you. It does my head in when people post what worked for them, but not everything else they tried. I hope to write posts that cover all angles!

Before you try any methods there is a simple test that will determine the severity of the problem you may have, which is worth doing before you attempt to try and fix the issue.

Diagnostic Check

1. Make sure you have your Mac OS X install disc in your optical drive.
2. Shut down your machine.
3. Turn on your machine again and hold down the Shift key. This will boot your machine in safe mode.
4. Shut down your machine again.
5. Remove the battery.
6. Remove the power cord.
7. Hold down the power button for 5 seconds.
   This has reset your System Management Controller (SMC).
8. Turn your machine on and hold down the “c” key while the computer boots.
9. Check for an Airport menu while booted to the install disc.

If there was no sight of anything Airport related you are basically dealing with a shot Airport card or motherboard. If there is a mention then we are good to try one of the methods below to resolve the issue.

Method 1: Reinstall Mac OS X

Straight forward to do, but a pain in the arse setting up your machine all over again. I did this and it worked until I downloaded the latest updates for Mac OS X from Apple. I had heard that the Airport card issue seemed to appear after a particular update is installed from Apple. This appeared to be the case for me, so I would not recommend reinstalling Mac OS X in this case. If you are starting from scratch then it is all good.

Method 2: Remove the Airport Extension

Go to the /system/library/extensions/ folder and find the appleairport.kext file. Delete this file and shut down your machine. Don’t restart your machine. Apparently you need to shut down your machine. You will also get a message about cache, which is fine and expected. This method didn’t work for me, but it did seem to for a lot of people out there.

Method 3: “That’s the Badger!”

This was the jackpot for me! Following the below steps sorted the issue and I haven’t looked back since.

1. Shut down your machine.
2. Turn on your machine again and hold down the Shift key. This will boot your machine in safe mode.
3. Shut down your machine again.
4. Remove the battery.
5. Remove the power cord.
6. Hold down the power button for 5 seconds.
   This has reset your System Management Controller (SMC).
7. Turn your machine on and hold down the “cmd” (command), “alt” (option), “p” and “r” keys.
8. Keep holding down the keys as above until you get a blue screen and a start-up chime three times.
   This will take a bit of time, but keep holding the keys down until you hear the last start-up chime.

Again these methods may not work for everybody, but hopefully it will work for some of you. Give me a shout if you have any questions or suggestions.