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iPad iPad mini 4 WiFi Constantly Crashing When Away From Home

Buadhai

Buadhai

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 15, 2018
1,138
440
Korat, Thailand
I have an iPad mini 4, WiFi only running 13.5.1.

Recently it started crashing, but only when I'm away from home. At home, it never crashes.

For example, this morning I'm at a coffee shop with "free" WiFi reading the Bangkok Post on the PressReader app. I do this every morning. About half way through the newspaper, the iPad suddenly shuts off. I restart it, but before I can do anything of substance, it shuts off again. I force reboot it. And, once again, it crashes before I can do anything. Once I managed to get to get to the Settings app, but as soon as I clicked on the Wi-Fi setting, it crashed. Eventually I got tired of trying to restart it and finished the Bangkok Post on my iPhone. (Not an easy task.)

When I got home, about half an hour ago, I switched it on and it has been running fine ever since.

This is the fourth or fifth time this has happened. It's been happening for the past couple of weeks.

Any guesses why it crashes only when away from home?
 
Buadhai said:
I have an iPad mini 4, WiFi only running 13.5.1.

Recently it started crashing, but only when I'm away from home. At home, it never crashes.

For example, this morning I'm at a coffee shop with "free" WiFi reading the Bangkok Post on the PressReader app. I do this every morning. About half way through the newspaper, the iPad suddenly shuts off. I restart it, but before I can do anything of substance, it shuts off again. I force reboot it. And, once again, it crashes before I can do anything. Once I managed to get to get to the Settings app, but as soon as I clicked on the Wi-Fi setting, it crashed. Eventually I got tired of trying to restart it and finished the Bangkok Post on my iPhone. (Not an easy task.)

When I got home, about half an hour ago, I switched it on and it has been running fine ever since.

This is the fourth or fifth time this has happened. It's been happening for the past couple of weeks.

Any guesses why it crashes only when away from home?
Click to expand...
Is the coffee shop WiFi a public network?
 
At this point in time I’d bring it for service, maybe try to set up iOS once before just to see if that improves the situation somehow. It’s impossible for us outsiders to guess which component is at fault. Best success!
 
Any chance you are using one of those automatic VPN or security apps? I have service with AT&T and have the AT&T security app. (Actually just on my iPhone.) anyway, when I'm away from home it automatically switches VPN on when I connect to a public network. I've had times where I could not access the internet when this happens. Crazy right.

Just a though.

Jim
 
You might try resetting the network settings via settings/general/reset/reset all network settings

This will delete all your wifi passwords so be aware of that if you take this step.

One way I have managed this is before you reset network settings, turn off Keychain. Then, reset network settings, see if it fixes your problem, and then turn keychain back on. It should synch your passwords from your iCloud account.

However, do this at your own risk as I have also heard folks do this procedure and it didn't restore their passwords

If your iPhone or iPad won't connect to a Wi-Fi network - Apple Support

Get help connecting to Wi-Fi on your iPhone or iPad.
support.apple.com support.apple.com

Reset your Network Settings. Tap Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings. This also resets Wi-Fi networks and passwords, cellular settings, and VPN and APN settings that you’ve used before.
 
I have Netshade on my iPad. I will turn it on before I go out and see if that helps.

As for resetting the network settings....

I tried that once before with the iCloud Keychain turned off. I still lost all my WiFi passwords across all devices. I will not make that mistake again.
 
Buadhai said:
I have Netshade on my iPad. I will turn it on before I go out and see if that helps.

As for resetting the network settings....

I tried that once before with the iCloud Keychain turned off. I still lost all my WiFi passwords across all devices. I will not make that mistake again.
Click to expand...
I hear you on not wanting to lose all the wifi passwords. It seems like Apple should make an easier way to reset network settings and then restore your wifi passwords etc. I must have gotten lucky when I did this because I've heard others that tried it and had the same experience you did.
 
VineRider said:
I hear you on not wanting to lose all the wifi passwords. It seems like Apple should make an easier way to reset network settings and then restore your wifi passwords etc. I must have gotten lucky when I did this because I've heard others that tried it and had the same experience you did.
Click to expand...

Right. For me it was quite some time ago. It may be fixed by now, but I don't want to be the one who does the test.

When it happened I figured I could just go in to the Keychain and retrieve them all. Wrong. All gone.
 
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Today I went to a shop that uses a Huawei router. No problem at all. The iPad never crashed. And, I forgot to use the VPN.

Tomorrow I'm headed to a place where it has crashed before and which uses a Lynksys router.
 
Buadhai said:
I have Netshade on my iPad. I will turn it on before I go out and see if that helps.

As for resetting the network settings....

I tried that once before with the iCloud Keychain turned off. I still lost all my WiFi passwords across all devices. I will not make that mistake again.
Click to expand...

Not having keychain on will make you lose those for sure as it’s keychain’s job to remember them. Or the user of course, but who keeps track of passwords themselves?
 
I only turned Keychain off on the iPad and then only when I did a Reset Network Settings. I was hoping that would avoid deleting the WiFi passwords in the Keychain. It didn’t work.

Normally I have iCloud Keychain turned on for all devices.
 
So, yesterday I went to a place where my iPad has never crashed. It didn't crash.

Today I went to a place where it has crashed before. And, it crashed again. As usual, it restarted itself, but after the restart it shut down.

My wife suggested that I wait some time before restarting. I did. After I restarted it, it didn't crash again.

It appears that this happens only with certain routers. The other two places where it crashes have LynkSys routers. This place has a Sercom T3 ST-244F. It was provided by their ISP which is True Online. (A Thai company.)

I still can't understand why this happens or why it suddenly started a couple of weeks ago.
 
Do you see any crash reports in Console?

Any difference in environment between the locations, i.e. very high vs high humidity, temperature?
 
I don't know where to look for crash reports for the iPad. There's nothing in:

/Users/mnewman/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice

The only thing interesting in the console is this line:

Code: 
error    13:44:40.035856+0700    installd    <private>: error = (container_error_t)<private>
error    13:44:40.106872+0700    installd    <private>: error = (container_error_t)<private>
error    13:44:40.145697+0700    installd    <private>: error = (container_error_t)<private>
error    13:44:40.188580+0700    installd    <private>: error = (container_error_t)<private>
error    13:44:40.203814+0700    installd    <private>: error = (container_error_t)<private>
error    13:44:40.216900+0700    installd    <private>: error = (container_error_t)<private>
error    13:44:40.298614+0700    installd    <private>: error = (container_error_t)<private>

Which is continuously repeated many, many times per second.

All the places where the crashes happen are air conditioned coffee shops. I guess the temperature is about 22ºC with the kind of low humidity you expect in a place that runs air con all the time.
 
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