A fix for G4 iBook kernel panics caused by AirPort cards

Oct 08, '09 07:30:02AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

Many iBook G4 laptops (and possibly other models) have a problem with the inbuilt AirPort card failing, and then causing regular kernel panics. This can be avoided in Leopard, and possibly Tiger, by replacing the kexts responsible for the AirPort with dud files like so:

  1. Quickly turn off AirPort in the menu bar after turning on the laptop.
  2. Open TextEdit and save two blank files to the desktop. The first is called IO80211Family.kext.rtf and the second is AppleAirPort.kext.rtf. Then go to the Desktop and remove the ".rtf" extension, and approve the change to a kext extension.
  3. In Finder, go to System » Library » Extensions, delete the files AppleAirPort.kext and IO80211Family.kext and authorize the action. Then drag the two 'dud' kext files from the Desktop into the Extensions folder, and again authorize the action.
  4. Restart the laptop.
You should see that kernel panics just aren't happening -- the Airport card won't be recognised in System Profiler, and the laptop can be used as normal with the aid of a USB wireless adapter. This blog post explains the process in more detail.

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