Since the last time I used my MPW, I got a new Android phone (a Moto G5 Plus running Android 7.0). When I try to connect to the My Passport WiFi network with the new phone, the connection fails. I briefly see “obtaining IP address” but then the status reverts to SAVED. I tried many times, always with the same result. As an experiment, I tried connecting with my old phone (a Samsung Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.2.2). It worked just fine! So it is definitely a phone problem. Is there some setting I can change to make it work?
My current MPW firmware version is v1.07.02
There should be a way to “delete/forget” the old WiFi connectection. On iOS it asks “Forget This Network?” Not an Android user, so cant be more specific.
Thanks for your reply. Yes, I did tell my phone to forget the My Password network many times. I rebooted the phone, I rebooted the MPW, I tried moving the phone and MPW closer together and farther apart, I tried different areas of the house. The phone sees the network but will not join the network. Curiously, all of my other devices connect immediately with no problem. They including a six-year old Android phone running an old version of Android as well as a recently-purchased Chromebook, and a Windows PC.
have you find the reason?
Hi all,
I know that this is old thread, but if you still have this problem I may help you. I’ve already posted this to few other threads, but as it appears in as many Google search hits as more likely someone to find it and resolve his problem and be happy using the MPW full featured.
Also it may help other people with Motorola phones having the same issue with the WD MPW/MPW Pro drives.
Last month I’ve bought 1TB WD My Passport Wireless. I was looking specifically for the first version original MPW as it is much more compact and light than the Pro successor.
Soon as I’ve got it I realized that I have the same problem connecting my phone to the MPW’s built-in Wi-Fi. My Phone is Motorola Moto G5S (with Android 7.1.1) and suffers from the same issue like the previous generations G3, G4. I guess that more Motos are affected.
Last few days I was very disappointed and angry about this problem and because there is no solution for more than a 2 years from WD…
I’ve started digging in this problem and finally yesterday I’ve found a reliable solution!
Here is a relatively short description how I’ve identified the problem and how I’ve resolved it.
I. Identifying the problem:
I’ve turned on the Developers Options in the Settings menu of my Moto G5S and than under Networking I’ve turned on “Enable Wi-Fi Verbose Logging”.
This showed me that phone attempts to connect to the MPW’s Wi-Fi it constantly gets “NETWORK_SELECTION_DISABLED_AUTHENTICATION_FAILURE”.
As I was unable to think of how to get more error logging from the phone I looked at the logs of the MPW. They could be downloaded under the Support tab\System Reports in the MPW’s Dashboard, when you connect to it with a PC.
When I’ve downloaded the .zip file with the Logs I’ve extracted it and in the file “rsysmessages” (Open with Notepad or text editor) I found multiple connection errors from my phone.
There were repeating error lines with the MAC address of my phone’s Wi-Fi:
MyPassport hostapd: wlan1: STA “Phone’s Wi-Fi MAC address here” IEEE 802.11: authenticated
MyPassport hostapd: wlan1: STA “Phone’s Wi-Fi MAC address here” IEEE 802.11: associated (aid 1)
MyPassport hostapd: wlan1: STA “Phone’s Wi-Fi MAC address here” IEEE 802.11: disconnected due to excessive missing ACKs
MyPassport hostapd: wlan1: STA “Phone’s Wi-Fi MAC address here” IEEE 802.11: deauthenticated due to local deauth request
The I’ve started searching in Google for the “disconnected due to excessive missing ACKs” error and soon found that there could be an option for ignoring this behavior, as the other side of the connection may not process these awaited ACKs.
II. Resolving the problem:
As the internal system driving the MPW is some Linux, I’ve first enabled the SSH access to the MPW trough the Dashboard under Admin section.
I’ve used Putty (I’m using Windows PC) to make SSH connection to the MPW using the default internal IP of the MPW (192.168.60.1, credentials are provided when SSH is enabled in Dashboard).
Then I’ve searched for a config file for the Wi-Fi and found it in /etc/hostapd/. File is named “hostapd.conf” and in it almost et the bottom of the file there is the option preventing most Moto phones from connecting.
The option is called “disassoc_low_ack” and by default it is set to “1” (disassoc_low_ack=1). I’ve used “vi” in the PuTTy session to edit the “hostapd.conf” file and changed the option to 0 - disassoc_low_ack=0. Saved the file and rebooted the MPW.
After the reboot I was able to connect to the MPW’s Wi-Fi with my Moto G5s without any issues. Connection is stable and haven’t had no dropouts at all ever since.
I guess after every Factory reset of the WD MPW you have to do this change every time to re-gain connection to the MPW’s Wi-Fi, but this should not happen often.
I hope that someone at WD sees my post and if they still support the original MPW may consider this fix and release a new firmware update.
I guess some models of Xiaomi may suffer from the same problem also there may be other phone brands and models having same or similar issues.
Also I suspect that the latest versions of the MPW - Pro and SSD may suffer from the connection issues with some phone brands and/or models. Examining the Logs from the MPW and altering the options in the Wi-Fi’s config file may resolve most of these connection issues.
I hope this will help someone and I hope if this solution works for more people that it will spread over the Internet so more people may become happy with their purchase of WD MPW/MPW Pro!
Regards,
Daniel
