Airport Express 801.11b/g and the neverending, unconfigurable blinking amber light

Question

Gather round and let me tell you a tale. Once upon a time I bought an airport express 801.11b/g and I was very happy to use it for airtunes, extending a wi-fi network and the wireless printing capabilities. One day, it beagn flashing a scaaaary amber light. The base station stopped showing up in my airport utility 5.6 as well. The only way to get it to show up, was to hard reset it, and lose all the configurations I once enjoyed happily. After the hard reset, It would show up in the utility, and I would reconfigure it to do all its cool things it once did, and it would restart. But sadly, after restarting the blinking amber light came on a again. It would also not show up in the utility unless I hard reset it again, and the same thing happened over and over and over until I felt like pulling my hair out.
I decided to get another airport express a few months later, ultimately deciding that the unit must have just been defective. Bad luck. But - the second unit literally went through the SAME EXACT THING. Worked for a while, then onto the blinking amber light- hard reset- reconfigure-blinking amber light thing. Over and over and over. Just like the first one. The end.
So - either Im missing something totally fundamental or I had the misfortune of getting two defective units in a row. Both were bought used from different places, and worked "fine" for previous owners. Am I corrupting these things or what?
I have spent literally hours trying all the resets, configuring "workarounds" and nothing works. For both of them.
What do I do with these two devices? I don't need two shiny white paperweights.
Please advise,
Thanks.

Answer 1

Yes. It seems an integral part of the set up process though, you don't have to seperately configure the airport do you?
My wireless security is WPA/WPA2 Personal. When I go through the standard network set up, it automatically enters my wireless security settings. So it doesn't really seem to give an option to specifically set that option on the airport if that makes sense?
I did go through maunual mode to try that with the same result:
If I'm using the airports own network and connect to the wifi, no security, then I'm getting airtunes from my macbook. Of course this means it's plugged into my router via ethernet which isn't any use to me as I want it in my kitchen, and would rather not limit my apple devices to b/g when I have a decent N router, and would also mean running a huge ethernet cable across my house!
The seller has said it worked for him but he's not up to scratch on his tech, so if I'm sure it's malfunctioning he'll refund. Obviously this is great news and he seems like a very nice guy so I want to be certain it's not me malfunctioning before I send it back!
So in summary I have it functioning on it's OWN network:
Wireless mode: Create a wireless network
Wireless network name: Apple Network XXXXXX
etc
Once 'wireless mode' is switched from 'create a wireless network' to 'join a wireless network' I select my current WiFi, security and password, checked the TCP/IP settings all good. Select 'Update'. Get the warning that device and network will be temporarily unavailable am I sure I want to continue. Then it goes through the same as before, says it's succesful, restarts to flashing amber with no way of accessing it unless I hard reset.
Thanks for the help so far...