HOWTO: Configure wireless with 64-bit WEP on Mac OS X


I came across a need to do this last night as I was trying to get my girlfriends new Macbook onto the wireless router I have here. So I logged on to the router and found Key 1 and told her to type it in. Much surprise did i get when it denied access. So I tried again, and again, and nothing. So I tried changing the key, and nothing happened. I even tried a 128-bit WEP but nothing happened.

So I tried no WEP or WPA, and got a connection straight away. I checked this on my laptop, by deleting the keychain item for the WLAN, and re-entered it on my laptop, and got nothing. Bugger. No wireless now. Thank god I had a cable plugged in and at hand. So I hooked up and started browsing. I found quite a lot of sites with ideas, like MAC address filtering, but I didn’t want that. I only found one website which mentioned the solution. Luckily, one is enough.

Here’s what you do

1. Set up your 64-bit WEP as normal, and make sure Key 1 is selected.
2. Go to your Mac and enable Airport if its not already done so.
3. From the Airport menu, select the SSID of your network
4. When asked for a password, enter 0x (thats zero-x) followed by your WEP key, i.e. 0xFF12345678
5. Your computer should now connect with no problems at all.

picture-2.jpg


Of course some people would say that you should use more secure methods, like WPA and MAC filtering, but I also have a WM2003 PDA here for sat nav and a few other reasons, none of which I can explain, and that barely supports WEP.

Hope that helps someone at some point.

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61 Comments

  1. This blog is really superb!!! Thank you for you work! Good Luck

  2. Interesting, never run into that problem but good to know what to do

  3. “0x” signifies something as being hex. Very good tip as I was having a heck of a time figuring out how to get this working.

    Thanks a bunch!

  4. No problems Andrew. I struggled for a while too. Couldn’t find much from Apple. 0x is a common thing in PC talk, especially with counting numbers (i.e. hex, binary, etc).
    I think I saw somewhere the other day that a $ also does the job. Haven’t tested it though.

  5. you are cool…man
    safe my life!!

  6. I spent ages fucking around with this before I found your post. Thankyou.

    Whilst technically this makes sence, its all very “un -mac” to have somthing like this so “not-straight forward”

  7. I agree Richard. There is no way to select which key you want, and I even struggled to join the wifi network with a passphrase.

    There are some aspects of networking on Mac’s i like, its easy to browse networks, but I find mounting shared folders as volumes isn’t the best way to manage it. That’s where I like Windows (god help me). At least there I can scan up and down file structures fairly easily.
    But you can’t beat a mac for printer sharing. So easy really. I now use Bonjour for Windows at the house here.
    Thanks for commenting anyway

  8. Thanks, mate; your solution worked perfectly for me (switcher, new Macbook, 64bit WEP Netgear wireless). You’re right – it only takes one webpage to give you the answer, and for me yours was it!

  9. Cheers – again v ‘unMac’ – glad I found your site so quickly. No matter how much experience I get I always need to have another pc with a cable connection running nearby – otherwise I’d never find the people who know. Thanks again. (PS I’d also read about the $ but I tried your solution first so can’t say if it works).

  10. THANK YOU! My belkin router gave out and stopped working so i dragged out a netgear one i had laying around to get my net access back up but there are so many networks on my street i just know someone would end up using mine by mistake as sometimes i pickup next doors and connect to theirs automatically and kill their upload rates. YAY now I can surf without someone leeching my broadband from outside!

  11. Thanks Dougals Furs, the hint on adding 0X before a WEP key on a Mac was most appreciated. I have had exactly the same problem and I am amazed…no, sorry…FLABBERGASTED..(!) even, that one is just supposed to know that….obviously, the Netgear info stuff, bless them, had no effing mention…
    You get a dedication award to show your gf for sussing it out, and my heartfelt thanks for sharing it…

    ..time for bed, said zebedee….(not! – sorry..)

  12. Thanx a lot!
    Saved my day

  13. Thank you so much. Was struggling to connect to a Netgear router, and this did the trick. Cheers!

  14. Awesome, you really saved me lots of headache :) :)

  15. Thanks…
    But my WEP is key 2, how to configure in MacBOOK

  16. you just saved my life yo. thanks.

  17. @Dora, I would think this should work the same really. Do you need to use key 2?

    Glad to hear this is helping so many people.
    On a note, I’ve upgraded my security to WPA and used a very good site for generating a key. I’ll post the link later.

  18. Thankyou soooo much. You have saved me countless hours of research with this post. Cheers again :)

  19. I finally have been able to sign on to my network using the 0x thanks–but none of my apps can access the net–i get timeouts on everything. I am using at&t dsl with a 2wire router and I have a macbook pro. This is the first time I am attempting this (new laptop & router). Is there another step I need after I access the network? Jack

  20. Thanks, china!
    A friend was nice enough to give me their unused netgear router to use on my new macbook so i spent all last night trying to set it up before unplugging everything and reconnecting to my ADSL line…
    I’ll try this tonight! :D

  21. Jack,
    Go to System Preferences, Networking, and double click on the Airport connection. Got to the TCP/IP tab and see what the IP is. Its should be something like 192.168.*.* with two numbers where those stars are. If its not, then you’ve not got an IP address from your router. Check the setting and see if DHCP handling is turned on. If not, do so, or alternatively you could self assign an IP address.
    See if that helps

  22. I’m with my Mac in an Office that uses Windows 98 and their WEP encryption is 64bit. The password they use has 10 digits and I cannot connect if I put this into the WEP field. So I tried the trick here and preceded the password with 0x (zero x). I also tried the dollar sign. Both did not work :-(

    Could this be because the key must be set to 1 ? But where do I chose the key ?

    Thanks, Martin.

  23. I have to add that the office does not want to tinker with their router settings…

  24. Martin, firstly, I would highly recommend an update to the Win98 network. Thats really not safe for use (unless you don’t have email or internet access). Even then its not great.
    But regarding your WEP issue, if you’re using a 10 character passkey, then you should still need to input 0x or $ at the start of it.
    The other option to look at is how is the network dishing out IP’s? Is each PC self assigned, either on the PC itself or on the router/switch. If so, then you’ll need to find out the IP range and assign a free IP.
    I would hope that the router/switch will do some DHCP and assign IP’s though. Without an IP and a gateway address, you won’t be able to access any functions.
    The WEP key must be set to key 1 but that is configured on the router. Have a word with your IT department about that.
    If all else fails, perhaps look at the Airport Express. Plug a LAN cable into that, and set up a separate Wireless Access Point for your laptop, and use WPA encryption.

    Try taking a network cable from a known working PC and sticking it in your Mac ethernet port. Look in System Preferences, Network, and look at the Ethernet details. If an IP is shown, then you are on the network, and you should be able to access the shared utilities, internet, etc. (If its 169.x.x.x then you have a problem)
    If you get an IP that is 10.x.x.x or 192.168.x.x. or 172.x.x.x then you’re good to go.

    Let me know how you get on.

  25. Good heavens. Thank you so much for posting this!

  26. Thanks a million! Couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t connect but I’ll try this now, makes sense that it would. Doesn’t make sense that you’d need to tell it your using hex but there it is!

  27. oy, i was very excited to see this posting until i tried it and it didn’t work! i have a qwest actiontec modem and a new macbook = the modem/network is not allowing the macbook in with any security, only when it is off – any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as ive spent days now troubleshooting/researching! cheers!

  28. Have you got a cable connection, rather than one over telephone lines? If so, try connecting the macbook directly to the modem and see if you can get online then. If so, then thats a good start.
    Then just try powering off the modem and leaving it off for about 10 mins, then plug the everything back in (router into modem/cable connection) and power back on.
    See what that does. If nothing, let me know more details about whats connected to where
    Good luck.

  29. …wired and wireless work great as long as one doesn’t care about security. Seems Apple has no idea on how to implement wireless security into Leopard? Talking to support is useless, the answer is always the same: “purchase a new/different router”. Dual-booting .. Vista runs great – no problems. Leo seems to be in the very early beta stages.

  30. Douglas, I wanted to quickly let you know that it actually did work (my original post from Dec 19th). It worked at the first time but then it did NOT work anymore. Since the Mac doesn’t give me any hint wether it’s a bad password or a bad signal I was in the dark. I thought all was entered correctly, as a matter of fact I saved the password in the keychain upon first successful connection. Here is a REALLY funny and almost strange workaround which I use now (hang on, it’s really unbelievable). — I have a Sony Clie UX50 that can connect to Wifi (BTW it does have a explainatory blurb to add that “0x” in the beginning if the password is hexadecimal) and the Clie always connected, just not my iBook (both devices about year 2003). Now when I connected with the Clie, the Mac auto-magically connected then. As if the Clie “helped” push the energy a bit forward or so. I don’t think it’s got to do with weak signals because this problem and the workaround was necessary even if just 1 meter away from the D-Link DI-524 wireless router.

  31. Impressive. I spent 3 very frustrating hours last night trying to get WEP enabled once I truned it off for a minute to try something. That was so simple. I can’t for the life of me figure out why I could not find this bit of information in any of the official web sites I visited. Thanks.

  32. Wow! 2nd hit on my search, and this was the answer I needed. Thank you so much!

    I won’t pretend to understand more than I do, so I’ll amplify that this is very un-Mac-like, and ask:

    Uh, why isn’t there a plaintext passphrase option here? Since I use a plaintext passphrase to autogenerate the Keys, wouldn’t it make sense from a Mac to be able to take the plaintext passphrase?

    Again, thanks for this post. You helped me solve a riddle!

  33. Thank you so much!! i almost want to hit my ibook with a big hammer! you have save my little 4yrs-old ibook!

  34. Cool !! Thank you so much…. i fixed the problem.

  35. Ta for this – very useful.

    Keep up the good work.

  36. MacBook Pro with OS X… unable to connect to WEP-64 bit with key 1 typed in. Found and tried your workaround, using “0x” or “$” before the key. BUT… I can only type eleven characters into the password window, not twelve, so I can’t type the key “0xHHHHHHHHHH”. What does that mean, not being able to type in twelve characters? Using a $ sign, I was unable to connect.

  37. Ben, What version of OS X are you running?
    I assume you’ve tried just entering the WEP key without any prefix?
    Its possible (can’t easily verify as I don’t run WEP now) but 10.5/Leopard may now deal with these keys properly, and limit your text input to the maximum characters that the WEP protocol will allow.

  38. Still can’t connect :(
    Am using a macbook pro core duo
    with OS 10.5 leopard
    when I use the 0x or $ trick, it keeps telling me ‘timeout on connection’ (in the password box)
    just entering the key didn’t work, either. Under Windows, however, not at all a problem…

    thx for the tricks, but for me, they don’t work

  39. by the way, we use a 10-digit WEP-key at the office (also due to some voice devices that only support 64-bit WEP

  40. Sam, is it possible your company also uses some other form of authentication, like validating username and domain, or a certificate?
    Have a quick look in Console.app and see if there are any other errors.

  41. Thanks for that advice, I can now connected onto the web. However it only works when I go through Network Diagnostics for some reason. Any other way and it still says the password is incorrect.

  42. This is great help! Yet another mysterious Mac idiosynchracy that is poorly documented. (Like the 1900 vs. 1904 date standard in Excel.) Could have saved myself a lot of time just now if I’d read your page first!

  43. FYI, I’m running an older Mac (G4 powerbook) and found that preceding the WEP key with “$” and not “0s” was what worked best.

  44. thanks for this tip bloody old G3 mac tried WPA wouldnt work,

    did this 0x and 64 wep worked,

    now im wondering would WPA key work with 0x in the password section ???

  45. Mike, I’m now using WPA and there is no need to put any prefix to your key. I have a 20 character string which I just input and connect to.
    Its possible its a OS issue. What version are you running?

  46. THANKS!

    Why is it Apple doesn’t make this easy…or AT LEAST provide some help online or on macbook itself about how to do this?!

  47. I have a brand new MacBook which I am trying to connect to my linksys router. It has a 64 bit encryption on it. With my other macs I use “0x” or “$” and it works fine. For some reason this new mac blocks “0x” and “$” from the password box. It seems like apple is trying to make this difficult!!!! Does anybody know away around this?

  48. Thanks:)

  49. Thanks a lot for the info! no more people hacking into my wireless now :)

  50. Thank you. Just purchased an Imac and you helped me get over my first issue.

  51. Thanks to all those who left a comment saying that this helped them. I would like to again state that WEP is not the best choice of wireless security as it is fairly easily hacked, so if you can, use WPA or better.

  52. Thanks so much for this…In setting up my AirPort Express on my PC, It didn’t understand my Hex WEP key…this did the trick.

    Why Apple doesn’t make this more clear, I’ll never understand! You saved me many hours of frustration!

  53. Awesome! So glad there are people like you that contribute to the internet

  54. Thank you. This has saved me a lot of hassle.

  55. I’m having trouble connecting at my school, I tried both symbols (0x & $) but I noticed that the WEP key has 11 digits, is this any different. I have the Macbook Aluminum with OSX

  56. Tank you so much, after five hours of trying i finally found this site, one minute later the whole family on a variety of laptops is online and happy. can’t belive it, of course I’m considered geek no1 now! Thanks!!

  57. Thanks for this! I’ve spent ages with a friends Macbook, I’m new to Mac world and so it feels very unfamiliar (that’s not a criticism before anyone gets worried).

    P.S. It may have just been the uusual wireless Voodoo, but it also seems that the key needs to be capitalised, as I was entering it in lower case and still not getting through.

  58. Wow! Thanks a million – you restored my sanity after several hours of trying to resolve this issue. Keep up the great work..

  59. This is great for many, but I’m a special case. My family is paranoid and set the WEP key to 2. They won’t let me change it back. I can’t connect Wirelessly anymore like I could on my PC. Is there anyway to do this is WEP key 2?

  60. I am still having trouble making this work…. I tried both the 0x and the $ and it won’t accept either. The router is a Linksys N Broadband router. My Mac will work with a WPA, but the PC is unable to log on then. Any suggestions?

  61. youre a bloody legend!!

    cheers!!


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  1. By John G Bell’s Blog » links for 2007-07-18 on 18 Jul 2007 at 9:27 am

    [...] How to configure wireless with 64-bit WEP on Mac OS X « Bassist among Douglas Furs (tags: howto) [...]

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