MacBook Pro SMC Firmware Update 1.3 - Networking Issues

[bigams]

Just wanted to let people know that when you update you MacBook Pro firmware it will mess up your networking on your bootcamp partition. It is simply solved by shutting down your VM. Go to Virtual Machines > Settings > Network. Now us the minus sign at the bottom of the screen to remove the networking. Once removed just select the plus sign to reinstall the networking and everything seems to work just fine again.

Hope this helps.

Blessings,

Aaron Smith

[gbullman]

I applied the SMC 1.3 Firmware Update this morning. Just adding a data point that I experienced no issues with 2 Virtual Disk based VMs.

Overall environment is; Late 2007 MacBook Pro, Leopard 10.5.7, Fusion 2.0.4, VMs running Windows XP SP3, latest patches.

[bigams]

I am pretty sure that normal VMs will be fine, but there may be an issue with those are that using their bootcamp disks as a VM. Thanks for the response.

[WoodyZ]

Just wanted to let people know that when you update you MacBook Pro firmware it will mess up your networking on your bootcamp partition. It is simply solved by shutting down your VM. Go to Virtual Machines > Settings > Network. Now us the minus sign at the bottom of the screen to remove the networking. Once removed just select the plus sign to reinstall the networking and everything seems to work just fine again.

Frankly I fail to see how the SMC Firmware Update 1.3 could even touch the Boot Camp partition Virtual Machine and that deleting the Network Adapter from the Settings of the Boot Camp partition Virtual Machine was anything more then a coincidence as all that does is change the state of one parameters in the Boot Camp partition.vmx configuration file.

It changes the following from:

ethernet0.present = "TRUE"

To:

ethernet0.present = "FALSE"

Then back to:

ethernet0.present = "TRUE"

Now I can't apply the SMC Firmware Update 1.3 update to test as it doesn't apply to the version of OS X or Mac that I'm running however I suspect that maybe you didn't follow the directions presented after the update. Now I'm not saying you didn't and just saying that's the only logical thing I can think of at this moment.

I'm also open to is being an issue however many more people are going to have to report the exact same thing under the exact same conditions before I even start to lean in that direction.

[kuhnman]

I just tried the suggested solution (removing and adding back the Network settings), but that did not solve my problem. I'm working with a true VM (not Bootcamp), and I cannot connect to my company's domain (which is controlled by Active Directory). It worked fine this morning, until I installed the firmware update. Then all my VM's stopped allowing me to login on my domain. I can only login if I select a local machine user login. My VMs are Windows XP SP3 and the latest Fusion. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[WoodyZ]

Shutdown, not suspend, the Virtual Machine('s) from within the OS and then close Fusion and reboot the Mac.

Open Fusion and start the Virtual Machine('s) and try connecting to the AD.

Are you still having issues?

[kuhnman]

I tried your suggestion, but it didn't do anything. Next I unbound and rebound the VM to Active Directory. That seemed to work yesterday. I was able to work in the domain and everything seemed fine. Today, however, after shutting down both the VM and the Mac itself, it will not login to the domain again. Next I'm going to try unbinding both the VM and the Mac and rebind both of them to AD and we'll see if that helps. Incidentally, I've tried going back to a backup of my VM that I know worked fine within the domain, and that did nothing either.

[kuhnman]

Hopefully my final notes on this issue. I found that the Mac, itself, was no longer bound to the domain. It appears that the firmware update blew away the binding to Active Directory. Don't know why, but that seems to be the case. So, first I rebound the Mac to AD, rebooted, then opened Fusion and rebound the VM to AD. As a final test, I shutdown the VM and shutdown the Mac, and rebooted and everything remained bound and able to login to the domain.