Airport Express – Does it wear out after a few years?

Question

Does an Airport Express wireless modem wear out after a few years?
Recently I've come home a number of times to find no wireless on my iMac, iPhone and iPad even though the airport unit is displaying a green light. Also, sometimes when I've left the iMac in sleep mode recently, I've returned and gotten either no signal or a prompt for my password, which is saved on the iMac.
Generally, rebooting the Airport unit and/or the devices fixes the problem – until it happens the next time.
I bought my Airport Express in late 2005. My mother, who bought her Airport express six-to-12 months earlier, is having the same problems.
Has anybody else encountered this issue?

Answer 1

I think some of the older original models did fail sooner. But that was a short lived period. Solid state electronics don't "wear out" - that's what makes them so reliable and great compared to tubes.
I thought mine was bad but I did what is called a hard restart of the unit. This fixed it. Caution though: don't do these hard restarts all the time. They will damage the unit if used too often.
See owners manual for how to do a hard restart. It's a bit tricky and involved holding in the reset while plugging it in. Read directions first. Also,try the soft restart options first before you use this nuclear option. But the hard restart seems to fix things for good once done.