OS X 10.10 “Yosemite” Ethernet Adapter Problems? We can help!

10.10 Yosemite, non working Ethenet adpater

There has been a lot of buzz around upgrading to 10.10 and afterward having network related problems. This post will focus on our USB3-HUB3ME, USB3-E1000, USB2-E1000 and USB2-E100 Ethernet adapters, but we encourage you to apply the concept of this content to troubleshoot other brands or similar network related issues.

First, it is a good idea to check if you have any possibility of connecting to your network via WiFi. If you cannot connect to any network via WiFi or Ethernet adapter, you might want to carefully consider this Apple forum thread which addresses this problem. If this is not your problem and is isolated to your Ethernet adapter only, the latter set of instructions is for you.

For OSX/BSD/Unix/Linux it is best practice to remove non core kernel modules/drivers/extensions before performing a major upgrade and to reinstall the latest revision after this has been accomplished. We will take a similar approach to fix this issue.

Again, these instructions are for a seemingly non working Ethernet adapter (USB3-HUB3ME, USB3-E1000, USB2-E1000, USB2-E100) after upgrading from 10.9 “Mavericks” to 10.10 “Yosemite”.

  1. Disconnect Ethernet adapter
  2. Take a look at “System Information” > “Software” > “Extensions” and look for an instance labeled “AX88179_798A” (for the USB3-E1000 and USB3-HUB3ME), “AX88178” (for the USB2-E1000) or “AX88772” (for the USB2-E100) and select it for you to be able to look at the “Location” path (as an example, the AX88179_79A instance has the following path: /Library/Extensions/AX88179_178A.kext)
  3. Open your Terminal and run the following command:
    sudo kextunload /pathof/thextension/NAME_OF_THE_KEXT_FILE.kext

    (note this is the path shown in system information in step 2). Now you have unloaded this extension.

  4. Reboot
  5. Download the newest driver from here and install
  6. Connect the Ethernet adapter and test

8 comments on “OS X 10.10 “Yosemite” Ethernet Adapter Problems? We can help!”

  1. echo

    i am currently with mac os x 10.10.2.

    nothing seems to work — neither ax88179 ver. 1.2 nor ver. 1.4. green “light” in network system preferences with assign ip address and everything, but no internet connection.

  2. Kiran Kumar

    Its Not working for MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) OS X Yosemite Version 10.10.4

  3. pui

    anyone has a USB2-E1000 and working on osx 10.11?
    the driver downloaded only works up to 10.10?
    mine doesnt work with downloaded new driver

    • Sachiko

      Hi Pui,

      Thank you for posting the question here! Actually, the chip set manufacturer of AX88178 hasn’t officially released the new device driver for Mac OS X 10.11 yet. But I’ve tested the current device driver with the following environment, and verified it worked.
      – Macbook Air
      – Mac OS X 10.11.1
      – “Apple Mac OS X 10.5 to 10.10 Drivers Installer” from ASIX site. Version 2.1.0, Release Date is 2014-11-06.

      Our testing environment didn’t previously installed the device driver. Has the USB2-E1000 adapter worked before, but stopped working after you upgrading the OS X into El Capitan?
      If you needed the future assistance, please contact us at support@plugable.com with a bit more detailed information about the symptom with the Amazon Order ID. Thanks!

      -Sachiko
      Plugable Technologies

  4. Aron Griffis

    Finally upgraded an older MBP to the latest OS X and ran into this problem. I was unable to get the kextunload to work, but this did fine:

    1. unplug USB3-E1000
    2. rebooting to unload the old extension
    3. load the new driver
    4. reboot again (required by driver installer)
    5. plug in USB3-E1000

    At that point the USB Ethernet connection showed up properly in network settings.

    Thanks Plugable for great products and for the tip to get this working!

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