{"id":2224,"date":"2014-04-26T08:00:12","date_gmt":"2014-04-26T06:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/outofmymind.scanlen.com\/?p=2224"},"modified":"2014-04-21T20:33:02","modified_gmt":"2014-04-21T18:33:02","slug":"nexa-vega-n4-lets-fix-the-wifi-mac-address-issue-ourselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/outofmymind.scanlen.com\/?p=2224","title":{"rendered":"Nexa Vega N4 – Lets Fix the WiFi MAC Address Issue \u2013 Ourselves"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Topic So we rooted the Nexa Vega N4, and we made a complete backup of the phone. Now for the final stage of fixing the WiFi MAC address issue ourselves – the actual editing of system files.<\/p>\n

Now for those of you who don’t know what I mean by WiFi MAC address issue let me quickly explain.<\/p>\n

As an additional level of security on my WiFi I use MAC address filtering. So if the WiFi does not get a request from a predefined list of approved MAC addresses to connect, it will just drop the request. \u00a0Yes it is a lot of effort in maintaining a list of MAC addresses for each device but it is just one added step in “securing” the WiFi network.<\/p>\n

Now while testing the demo Nexa Vega N4 I noticed that each time the phone rebooted it would change the MAC address of the phone…check it out<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"Nexa<\/a>

WiFi MAC Address Bug – BEFORE reboot of phone<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\"Nexa<\/a>

WiFi MAC Address Bug\u00a0– AFTER reboot of phone<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

So as you can see I had to fix it – or send to the supplier to fix (not with a new phone \ud83d\ude41 )<\/p>\n

After reading a LOT of posts on XDA Developers and trying a few things I was not having success. \u00a0It was 01h45 on a Saturday morning and I needed to rest. \u00a0 The following morning after being woken up by my daughter at just after 07h00 I decided to give it another shot. I started doing Google searches and opening many tabs and then…I stuck gold!<\/p>\n

I came across this website called GizBeat.com. \u00a0On it Damian Parsons wrote about\u00a0Fix NVRAM Err = 0\u00d710 And Random MAC Address!<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

It seems there is a file called WIFI<\/strong><\/em> that is located in the\u00a0\\data\\nvram\\APCFG\\APRDEBed<\/em><\/strong> folder of the phones system. \u00a0It is inside of this file that the WiFi MAC Address is specified. If the default value is set to 00-00-00-00-00-00 in this file then the phone will randomly generate a MAC address for the WiFi to be able to connect. \u00a0One actually had to go and SPECIFY the MAC Address in this file to make it static!<\/p>\n

The tools that I used was: Solid Explorer<\/a> (as I purchased it) and Hex Editor<\/a> (also in the Play Store).<\/p>\n

Adapting his instructions, do the following:<\/p>\n

1. Note your current MAC Address\u00a0(From home screen > Menu button > Settings > About > WLAN MAC Address)<\/em> or the address you would like it to be.<\/p>\n

2. Using Solid Explorer<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, navigated to the system room \\data\\nvram\\APCFG\\APRDEBed<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

2. Copy the\u00a0WIFI<\/strong><\/em> file to the SD Card \u00a0– keep one as a backup (name it say WIFIbackup) and another as the one you are going to edit (leave it WIFI)<\/p>\n

3. Open now Hex Editor<\/a><\/strong><\/em> on the phone and edit the WIFI<\/strong> file on the SD Card<\/span><\/p>\n

4.\u00a0The MAC address starts row 1, column 4 and ends at row 1, column 9 – change the values from 00 to the value you would like it (or what your current MAC address is). \u00a0Save and exit the tool.<\/p>\n

5.\u00a0Navigate back to \\data\\nvram\\APCFG\\APRDEBed and note the file permissions<\/p>\n

6.\u00a0Overwrite the previously existing WIFI file with your modified WIFI file<\/p>\n

7.\u00a0Check file permissions and change to same as the original WIFI file if required \u00a0(it was in my case)<\/p>\n

8. Reboot phone and check MAC address<\/p>\n

9. Reboot phone again and smile when you realize that the MAC address is now staying the same \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

So going over our checklist:<\/p>\n

Root Phone – Done!
\nBackup Phone – Done!
\nFix MAC Address Issue – Done!<\/p>\n

Regardless if you have a Nexa Vega N4 or not, I am sure that if you are sitting with an Android device that keeps changing its MAC Address of the WiFi card, this method will be the fix.<\/p>\n

Special thanks to Damian Parsons from GizBeat<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So we rooted the Nexa Vega N4, and we made a complete backup of the phone. Now for the final stage of fixing the WiFi MAC address issue ourselves – the actual editing of system files. Now for those of you who don’t know what I mean by WiFi MAC address issue let me quickly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-android"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/outofmymind.scanlen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/outofmymind.scanlen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/outofmymind.scanlen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/outofmymind.scanlen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/outofmymind.scanlen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2224"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/outofmymind.scanlen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2230,"href":"http:\/\/outofmymind.scanlen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2224\/revisions\/2230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/outofmymind.scanlen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/outofmymind.scanlen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/outofmymind.scanlen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}