I currently picked up a $21 Dell Truemobile 1490 wireless card to put in my MSI Wind instead of the Realtek that’s in it. It install just fine, I got it working in Windows and Linux with no issues, but OS X was another story.

It wouldn’t connect to a wireless network at all by itself. On the menu bar it wouldn’t show any wireless networks. It did show “AirPort: Not configured”. If I opened the network preferences, it would show up as Ethernet 2 off. I would have to turn it back on each time I rebooted. I would then have to select the drop down box to pick a network because it still wouldn’t show any networks in the menu bar (and the menu bar would still say not configured). I could join my network and get an IP address, but the menu bar icon would not show any bars at all. It would be right next to the access point and I could surf the net just fine though.

Thanks to a post at InsanelyMac, I was able to finally fix this issue.

1. Open Network Preferences
2. Remove all devices except Firewire by highlighting the device and then clicking on the minus sign below the device list
3. Reboot the machine
4. Open Network Preferences
5. Click the plus sign under the device list and select AirPort
6. Click Apply

Since doing that, my menu bar works, networks are connected to automatically, even after reboots.