I’m at a friend’s house and was trying to connect to their wifi network. I’m on my macbook running OS X 10.5.1 (Leopard) with all the apple updates. When I tried connecting to their network, I received this message from my Airport, “Incompatible Security” on the lower right of the login box. I searched around how to fix this on my iphone and read a few solutions that suggested owning the keychain item. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but have since figured it out and thought I would share.
Fix Incompatible Security Errors
1. Open Keychains and Create a New Password Item (Apple+N)
Fill in all your information. This seems to be more common with WEP Hex keys. Use the network’s name as the account name and keychain item name.
2. Edit the Keychain Item and Turn It Into an Airport Password
The thing here is that you have to edit this item to make it into an airport keychain item. Double click on the newly created keychain password to edit it. Make the Kind a Airport Network password and the Where a Airport Network. Hit save and then reconnect to the network. Keychain will ask you to allow the use if you did everything correctly.
6 responses so far ↓
1 tannerD // Jan 18, 2008 at 10:24 am
Do any of you know how to use leopard to locate the WEP key for an airport?
It was easy with tiger, but I don’t see how to do it with the leopard airport utility.
2 Avi Flombaum // Jan 18, 2008 at 8:55 pm
@tannerD
You should be able to get the WEP key for an existing aiport within the Keychain application.
3 ekdor // May 7, 2008 at 1:56 am
Continue to get the incompatible security message. I’ve checked the settings and all appear ok as best I can tell.
4 E Brolin // Aug 16, 2008 at 9:29 am
My attempt to use the solution suggested above didn’t work. I couldn’t change the “where” only to Airport network. The regular Netgear address remained. However the following DID work:
1. Reset the router to default by using a paper clip in the reset location. The default condition has no security so one can connect to it with no problem.
2. Connected to the router from my Macbook using the standard router address.
3. Reset security (I used WEP). Gave it a passphrase and it generated the passcodes.
4. Copied the screen that showed the passcodes to a Word file so I would have the passcodes.
5. Quit the Netgear window (the settings update bars had reached their end but the window had not reset as it normally would have.
6. Logged onto the wireless network using Airport. For the password I used the first passcode that had been generated. Did not use the passphrase.
5 Williams // Sep 16, 2008 at 11:32 am
We just fixed this on our machines since we are slow to upgrade. You have to go to airport under Network Preferences. Click Advanced in the lower right corner. Click the plus sign to add a network. Type in the network name exactly right (including caps). Select the correct Security level (probably WEP, given the problem). Make sure “remember this network” is highlighted. Click Ok. Now go up to the wifi icon up in the menu bar and select the network. You may need to type in your keychain password again. But this worked like a charm here on an old airport extreme network. Not sure why this extra step is in here (i.e. setting the network up manually) except to guess it has something to do with letting admins keep users from connecting to networks with weak security unless explicitly allowed to.
6 Eric Riml // Oct 21, 2008 at 3:04 pm
If you’re using WEP 128bit security (and you should be using WPA if you can, but some older computers don’t accept that protocol), you may need to put a $ in front of the password. The password should be 26 characters long, plus the $ symbol if it’s needed (which would make 27 characters).
I used “WEP Password” rather than WEP Hex or WEP ASCII, and it worked.
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