Airport extreme needs manual restarts

My airport extreme serves also as a router directly linked via ethernet to a cable modem. When it's up and running it works beautifully. However almost everyday at some point the airport extreme loses its connection to the modem. So not only do I have to restart it, but I have to restart it manually by pulling out the plug, restarting via Airort Utiiity generally doesn't work. I have recently tried a hard reset and reconfiguring, but to no avail. Any suggestions on how to fix this?

SMB is the windows networking standard..
That is not the important bit.. the important bit is the name is
Short.. no more than 20 characters.. less is good.
No spaces.
Pure alphanumeric. (not quite true.. but too hard to go through valid and invalid characters)
And yes, it is all names in the AE and all passwords... although passwords can be longer.
So base station name.. and password and wireless name/s .. and password.. and if you share a hard disk.. then the disk share name as well.
Gen2 Extreme is pretty old.. and 7.6.3 is lousy firmware.
I would go back to 7.5.1 or 7.5.2 as they simply work better. But if you need BTMM then 7.6.1
Look up the issues with latest version.
It could also be worth getting the power supply checked.. it has perhaps been running continuously for 4-5years.. that is a long time. Stuff goes bad over that time.

Similar Messages

External Drive connected to Airport Extreme, need Time Machine 3 Mac's Help

I own an Airport Extreme and just recently added two new Macs with the Time Machine feature to our household. I would like to use Time Machine to backup to my Airport Extreme that has a 500 GB hard drive connected. It seems Apple has this blocked since they have released the Time Capsule version of the router. Is there a work around this feature so I don't have to go out an purchase what I basically have already got? Please help. We would like to upgrade our older macs to Leopard and us the same system to back them up as well. Please advise. Thank you.

I had my USB drive on my APE working with Time Machine under 10.5.1 very reliably. A few days ago however, I needed to suspend a backup operation, and when I came back to restart it, time machine refused to mount the disk image on the drive. After several attempts to get it to connect with no luck I decided to delete the image (the sparce image file) and start over. Now TM refuses to create a new image.
BTW, on the Mac OSX hints site there have been suggestions to start a backup with the drive directly connected, then stop the backup, move the sparce image file to the root of the drive, reconnect the drive to the APE base station to get it working. I tried this again, but I think Apple has changed something in 10.5.2, because when directly connected TM no longer creates a sparce image file.
Anybody else seen this behavior after upgrading to 10.5.2?

Problem with lacie HD and airport extreme need help!!

Let me first off tell you what my set up is powerbook with the latest 10.4 os, airport extreme software up to date, a Lacie 500gb usb hard disk connected to the airport extreme, i've got an apple TV connected to the extreme via ethernet, I also have a macbook pro using the airport.
The problem i've got is the powerbook is the main hub between the external hard disk and the apple tv but it's started to not hold a connection to the lacie i keep having to tell the powerbook to connect then ok it with a password and as a result i have to keep re syncing things like movies and photos to the apple tv.
Is there a way to automatically connect the powerbook to the hard disk with out it needing a password if not can anyone come up with an explanation as to why the disk has started to unmount after being fine for weeks?
My macbook pro has no problems keeping a connection.
Thanks in advance

I just found out something today which might help you Daniel, but that doesn't solve our problem in a "classic" way...
So I was very obsessed by the fact that Windows Vista could actually access the shared HD with Bonjour and with a lot of testing I found this : let's say my macbook pro was off, if I would access the HD with Vista and then open up the MacBook Pro, then there would be no problem.
Eventually I found out that the problem really came from the fact that my WD MyBook 1Tb external drive was putting itself on standby after a while (which is a good thing actualy). When I was trying to connect to the drive while it was on standby with Finder, it would try to connect forever... however, it would physically wake up the external drive (I could tell by the sound)... but too late for Finder, and no way to access it other than rebooting the Mac... OR crashing Finder (Apple Menu - Force to quit). Then the Finder restarts automatically and the drive works.
I really don't like this solution (having to crash finder) but it works.
PLEASE if someone has a better way, let me know !!!

Airport Extreme Needs Daily Reboot to re-enable Wifi

All,
I bought an Airport Extreme in Nov 2014, firmware 7.7.3 in Bridge mode acting as an AP, my network consists of a 24port gig dell switch a Sonicwall TZ-210W (wireless off) and a windows 2008R2 file server also used for DHCP, DNS etc.
I have issues where my airport will stop letting certain devices on the network via wifi. I will get on my phone and it will be connected (iphone 6), get on the wifes macbook air, it will be working (sometimes), have my laptop from work that was connected fine 12hrs ago not get connected, my ipad (3rd gen) will not connect to the network, but my imac that is hardwired (connected directly to the airport (using as a switch for my imac) ) will connect just fine, but i can reboot any of the devices it seems like the ones that had a connection continue working but new ones will not or even if they were new in the past 12 hrs... All i have to do to get all of them online is to restart the base station (airport) I typically do that from my mac using the airport utility once it comes back up all of the devices previously working or not reconnect automatically and start working fine.
What I have tried...
1. Reset to defaults and re-setup Still fails
2. tried setting the channels static after using the wifi utility in my imac to see what channels would work best. still fails
3. i have tried moving it to different locations in my house - no luck still fails
4. i would try different firmware, but haven't seen any others avail.
5. searched forums saw posts of people a couple years ago with the previous version had similar issues and it was firmware related - No Luck
6. thought about sending home with a co-worker let them run it for a while, but number of devices etc. could be a cause. I probably have 40ish devices max on my network wired/wireless.
Do I have a lemmon? Can anyone give me other options? or do I need to have this replaced..

So just an update to anyone with similar issues. After posting my initial issue here and seeing John's reply I contacted Apple, and here is what they had me do and I have not had to restart my AirPort in a week now.
So I called them explained what I had going on at first the tech was a bit puzzled at why I would be having these odd symptoms, but we walked through each page in the Airport Utility on from my iMac and the only setting that he thought looked a little odd was that I had WPA/WPA2 Personal enabled as my wireless preference. He asked why I responded and told him because I had some family members that had older devices that were not compatible with WPA2 so I enabled rev 1 as well. So seeing that this was the only setting that looked odd he had me do a full factory reset, now I thought I had done this via software, but it turns out there are a couple different ways and the software way doesn't do it completely.
Doing a Factory Reset.
1. Unplug and disable wireless on any Mac that had used the airport utility to connect to the airport. (we did this because we wanted to make sure nothing pushed old settings into the airport.)
2. unplug power from the device. ( i found it was much easier todo this at the wall as you will need two hands in the next step.)
3. Find a paperclip or a tack that you can push the little button on the back of the airport in.
4. Push the tack or paperclip into the reset hole in the back of the device. (right next to the power connector, it was easier to jack into the wall than plug power at the airport while holding the reset button next to the power connector.)
5. Continue to hold the button until the unit boots and starts flashing orange, let it flash orange for 5-10sec then let go, it should continue to flash orange for a bit then go solid.
6. Once the light stops blinking you should be able to see this in an iOS device, he recommended doing the setup via an iPad or iPhone as it is a very streamlined and simple setup.
7. I then set my password and my wireless name etc. let it do the security on its own and that was that.
Like I said after doing that I have had no issues. Seems a bit strange to me that it would be the WPA option as if the option is there in my mind it should work fine or it should be removed. Anyway if this helps you out please post it, kinda wonder how many others have a similar issue...

Setup Guest Network with OS X Server and Airport Extreme - NEED HELP!

Hi All,
So I have a small business with a Mac Mini Server (10.6.5) and an Airport Extreme. The Airport is handling the routing and DHCP duties, while the Server is handling the DNS. The Airport is pointed to pull DNS from the Server. All internal systems work great accessing the internet and folders on the Server.
I need to setup a Guest network for internet access, so I turned this function on in the Airport Extreme. It sets up fine, but if you connect to that new Guest Network the system hangs trying to open a web page. My thinking is since the Server is the one handling the DNS it is not working for Guest computers since they are not part of our internal network. At least that is my theory, I could be wrong.
With this type of setup what do I need to modify to get this working? Anyone have any ideas?

After trying for days to figure this out I was finally able to get a working solution and I now have my APE providing a guest and main network while using my lion server as the Dsn server for the main network.
The setup is a bit of a hack and does require you to have at least two devices with staticly assigned ip information on the main network but it does allow you to serve dhcp for both networks from the server and make some services available to the guest network such as iTunes remote for parties.
1) delete your custom Dns entries from the Internet settings in the APE and set two dhcp reservations for .2 and .3 (in this case my Mac mini server and my airport express)
2) reduce the dhcp range to only have 2 available IPs (10.0.1.2-10.0.1.3) and save settings
3) on a computer connected to the main network install wireshark and begin sniffing for packets. Connect at least one device to your guest network and look for any packets that have an ip from your guest network (usually 172.16.42.x) once you capture one of these packets expand the vlan information. This should list a vlan ID ( in my case this was 1003. I would suspect this is universal but do not know)
4) on your server open network preferences, click the gear at the bottom and click "manage virtual interfaces", add a vlan that matches the vlan ID from above. Click ok and apply your settings. The vlan interface should get an ip in the guest network range from your APE.
* if you are running lion you will need to install server admin tools before proceeding*
5) open server admin and add the dhcp service. Create an entry for your primary network (ex: 10.0.1.x) make the dhcp range one higher than the settings in step 2 ( ie: 10.0.1.4 to 10.0.1.253) assign this to the physical interface. Make sure this entry has your internal DNA servers
6) add another entry for the guest networks ip range (ex: 172.16.42.x) again set it one ip higher than step 2 ( 172.16.42.4 to 172.16.42.253) save and activate both ranges. Assign this range to the vlan interface. Make sure this entry either contains your isps dns servers or another public dns server. Turn on dhcp.
Because you have now assigned the only two addresses in the APEs pool for your primary network to static entries there will not be any addresses to assign and the APE will not respond to requests. This will allow your server to pick up the work of assigning IPs. As for your guest network, the APE will assign IPs for two host and then stop. Your clients may either get an IP from the APE or the osx server so both should have the same info. Just make sure the two static clients on your main network have the local DNA servers entered manually.

Airport Utility for my Airport Extreme needs to be changed to a different computer, because the current computer is down permanently.. How do I do this? Do I have to reset the Airport Extreme and start from scratch?

The computer (Win XP) on which the Airport Utility has been set up for the past few years is no longer accessible, so I need to set it up on a different computer. Can I do that with my exisitng wireless network, or will I have to set up a new network from scratch, once I have installed Airport Utility on the new machine?

You can install AirPort Utility on either a Mac or PC, but there would be no reason to make any changes to your existing configuration on the AirPort Extreme unless you need to do so.
Download files are here:
http://support.apple.com/downloads/#airport

Connecting to home internet via airport - always need to restart the router

I set my home PC as the main station to connect to my ISP. With a wireless router (linksys Wireless-B), I used to share the internet connection to other wireless devices, for instanace, my palm and ibook, my sister's notebook PC and Pocket PC. once, I took my ibook to an internet cafe, which gives free wireless connection facilities. My ibook obviously scanned the wireless network, and was connected (as I noted from the Summary of the "internet Connection". but, when I activate Safar, it said that it could bring me to any website because my computer is not connected to internet. it's very strange, as the Internet Connection said it's connected to the wireless network. The Safari page suggests me to run "network diagnosis". i follow the instruction, and it says I should restart the router and then it would work. I didn't succeed. A while later, it connected. I thought it was okay.
Then, this problem comes up even when I am using my home's internet connection via the airport. I use DHCP to connect to my home internet connection. though the airport summary page said that it's connected to my router (the IP address is my router's address), again, Safari said my computer is not connected to internet, so it didn't work. I followed the instruction of the Network Diagnosis, it again asked me to restart my router device. I also noted from the Airport Section of the Network Perference that, it says the airport has a self-designated IP addres, so it may not connect to the itnernet. later on, I retarted the router and the modem (without turn on my home PC), the ibook connected to the internet.
i checked the router setting of my home PC. I'm sure that it's open to all wireless user. Strange through, after I update the settings (even though i didn't make any changes, perhaps the action of 'save settings', it's kind of equivalent to the action of restarting it), my ibook's connection works. When my retarted my PC and ibook, the connection problem comes up again.
it's very frustrating. Does it mean that I need to restart my router everytime? What about if I want to connect to wireless hotspot outside?
Please please help

Your problem description is complicated, making it hard to figure out what exactly is wrong. Unfortunately, WiFi does this quite often.
To avoid this kind of problem, you should set up different Locations in your Network Preferences for different places that you connect up. That is, make one location for your Internet cafe and another for home. Leave the Automatic location alone.
For locations you know you are going to connect by WiFi, go to Network Port Configurations and drag Airport to the top of the list to give it priority.
If you have a location, where you want an ethernet connection or want to use your internal modem only, then drag those options to the top. Get the idea?
MacOS seems to get confused sometimes when you switch back and forth between different connections all the time. This will not happen if you tell MacOS where you are by explicitly setting a location.
To get out of a situation where MacOS thinks you are connected to non-existent ethernet connection, go into
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration
and delete the NetworkInterfaces.plist file.

Help me decide if Airport Extreme needs to be replaced or if it is a setting

I have a wireless network consisting of Airport Extreme 802.11n set up as "create a wireless network" that goes to two Airport Expresses. One is connected via ethernet because we have a stucco house and it is in the room above the garage. The other is connected to the network wirelessly and brings a better signal to the upstairs.
When I connect directly to my DSL modem wirelessly (it has that capability) I have speeds of 2.8 Mbps. When I connect thur my Airport, it's all over the map, but never above 1.5 Mbps. Randomly it will drop to .2 or .5 and stay there for hours.
Here are my settings:
I tried changing the channel. I have not reset it because I am unclear if a hard reset is necessary and, frankly, I can't remember all the steps I would need to perform to get it all up and running again.
My DSL guy who knows nothing of apple said it sounds like it's dying. Other info you may need is that DSL come in thru Netgear 7550 modem that has wireless capabilities. It used to be turned off until today, so interference with that is unlikely since it was turned off.

Should I just hard reset them all and start over and see if that helps? If so, how long would it take to get it all set up the right way again. I remember when I did this a year or two ago it took a LONG time to get it right.
I read in other airport posts that having it in Bridge Mode can "flood" something or rather (no idea what it meant). But can I change that setting and still have my express function they way they are now to create my wireless network all around our house? I'm afraid to try it, lest I screw everything up.
Please help!
thanks

Airport Extreme needs to be set-up in "Bridge mode" ??

I am trying to set-up a new intel iMac to a dsl service for my elderly uncle. The dsl people said that their system was compatable with OS 10.4.7 (which is installed) but that the Airport Extreme modem will need to be set-up in "bridge-mode." Can I do that? Where can I find instructions or help with that? When I queried "bridge mode" on this site I get lots of stuff with acronyms I don't understand and stuff about routers and wireless bridges and other stuff I don't understand... I really need help!
Flat-panel iMac, G4 tower Mac OS X (10.4) Setting up intel iMac
Flat-panel iMac, G4 tower Mac OS X (10.4)

Hi Buzz0432,
I think, "yes" - and i think i saw it in the booklet which you get with the AE. However, i'm slightly unsure about this at this instant since i'm not at home where my mac-stuff is.
i'll check on it and will report back lateron...
thomas

Airport Extreme, need old firmware, help

I have an airport extreme and I need to revert back to an older version of the firmware. Specifically I need the 7.2.1 firmware.
A link is here, http://support.apple.com/kb/DL218 And it does not work...
Where can I find a copy of that specific firmware?

The reason:
I have jailbroke my apple tv and I an using the extreme as a hub to pass through my hard drives so I can see them on XBMC (XBMC is the media center program I am running on the apple tv box)... I need the old firmware so I can make it work...
When I recieved the extreme this morning it had 7.2.1 installed on it... But I am a retard and upgraded because I did not know it woudl be a problem... Then to make things worse, I was not aware that upgrading the firmware was the problem, I thought it was the utility settings I had changed, so I removed the utility and reinstalled it... So now I do not have the option to fall back on 7.2.1, which was installed this morning...
So I am hoping to find a copy somehow so I can restore it and make this all work the way I want it to... It sure would be cool if the apple link worked, so I could restore it that way...

MacBook (White) is freezing needing manual restart, Office 08 related?

Please forgive me if this is in the wrong thread, this is my first time posting; I really couldn't figure out where this should go; I won't be offended if it gets moved.
For quite some time now, about a year and a half, every so often my computer would suddenly start to bog down, show the beach ball, one by one things would stop working such as the app dock, corners, etc., then mouse stops responding and eventually results in needing to be manually restarted. This whole process from start to finish takes about 30-60 seconds. I never once have received a crash report or any sort of clue as to what causes this problem. It would seem to happen rather randomly, but infrequently enough to not really be a true nuisance.
However, in September I switched from 10.5 to 10.6 and am updated to 10.6.4. At the same time, I started to heavily need to use this computer to type college papers and I constantly am using Office 2008. Around the time I switched to SL, this problem has increased to seemingly every two hours or so. It is causing major problems as I am losing large portions of work. I can give you what I have learned and what I have tried, but I cannot seem to find any sort of solution:
1. Possibly a corruption with a font - I opened fontbook, verified and cleaned up all duplicates and a few with critical errors, rebooted and reset the PRAM. No change.
2. Possibly a compatibility issue between Office 2008 and SL - I reinstalled Office 2008, updated everything, cleared the msword plist, reset PRAM, and still no alleviation.
Also, before SL, it seemed to be utterly random; now it does seem to coincide with the use of at least MS Word, and especially when I try to copy/paste or drag and drop something, and possibly when autosave is triggered but there is still no set pattern. I have found various tidbits of information online that lead me to believe that it might have something to do with something Office uses referred to as a Temporary Scratch File used to hold copied text, when drag-and-dropping, etc. and that it may be reaching a size limit that causes a fatal crash. Also, just before it crashed this last time, just before it completely froze, a window popped up from Word that read
"Word encountered an error reading JM2010Bus.tmp (name of file that was being used). The file may be corrupt."
I understand myself that this is pointing to the autosave file that Word uses, but it is not specific to just this file. It will happen seemingly at random regardless of the file being used and regardless of content or size.
Unfortunately (and maddeningly), I do not have any sort of error report or crash status that comes up after a restart, at least not automatically. Perhaps if there is a way to look at some sort of activity log leading up to a crash, I might be able to give you some more info about this problem, but I can't find anything myself. About the only facts I can give you are that it seems to occur mostly when Word is in use, and tends to be related to using copy/paste and/or autosave. The computer itself is a 2.1 GHz Intel Core Duo with 2Gb RAM and 320 GB HD. Office and OSX10.6.4 are all updated to the most recent available. This problem has persisted after switching from OSX 10.5 to 10.6, and has persisted past swapping in a new HD. Also, I own a black MacBook and a Mac Pro, both of which run Office 2008 and SL, and have never once encountered this problem. I can say for sure that it is software related and not hardware; this problem originally occurred in my black MacBook, but after I swapped drives from black and white, it only now happens in the white and the black is fine.
Please send me off in the right direction; I have to say that I am totally lost with this problem. I can't seem to find anything on this specifically or what to do about it after hours of searching on this forum and in google. I'm pulling my hair out!

How much free space is on the hard drive? Boot from your OS installer disk (10.6.x) and run Repair Disk from Disk Utility.

Auto connect windows share over airport extreme, need delay somehow

Hi, Once the Imac is up and running, I can conenct to my win 2k box on the network fine (not w2k server, jsut w2k pro). I've got the smb location in the users pane to load at startup. Problem is that it takes a couple seconds for airport to connect and get settled. That means when the smb mount command opens and tries to conenct, I get an error that the dsrive couldn't be written to or accessed. What I need, (i think) is a way to delay the smb mount for a few seconds, until after airport is done conencting. Anybody have any option for this, or a better way to connect that is reliable and consistant? It angers me that I can just map a network drive on a pc to another network pc in about 2 seconds, and that I have to run through hoops on the "simpler, more advanced" Mac. I love Macs, but between this problem, and trying to figure out why I've been trying for 2 hours to get a borderless photo print from the mac to my Epson, I'm a bit frustrated. It's not "just working" for me right now....Thanks!
Steve
iMac G5, Dual 2.7 G5, iBook G3 Mac OS X (10.4.1) mixed Tiger, os9,xp,w2k environment

Welcome to the discussion area!
I am assuming that your drive is correctly formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or FAT 32. If it's formatted as Windows NFTS, the drive will not appear.
You'll also usually need to use a powered USB hub, even if your drive has it's own power supply because the available power at the USB port on the AirPort Extreme is quite low.
Open the Finder and look for your AirPort Extreme icon under the SHARED heading on the the left side of the window.
Click on the AirPort Extreme icon and a folder representing your drive will appear in the right hand side of the window.
Double click the folder to mount the drive on your desktop.

Resetting airport extreme - will not restart

I have an airport express which i have bee using to extend the network for my airport extreme. I added a security password and cannot get the express recognized under the airport utility. I have done hard and factory resets and followed directions to add the express with the password - everything works fine until i update and get the message that the devices are restarting. I get a message stating the Express setting have been successfully updated and Aiport Express will restart, however after a few minutes i get this message:
AirPort Utility was unable to find your AirPort wireless device after restarting. - It says to try again but the express cannot be found unless i reset it.
this is the link to the directions I have been following - have tried hard,factory resets with and without ethernet cable:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2125180?start=0&tstart=0
Any help on how to fix would be appreciated
Thanks

There were incorrect settings which caused this problem. Did a hard reset of airport and then re did the setup.

Setup instructions for airport extreme needed

Can anyone please suggest some good instruction sites or downloadable files for the airport extreme?
I tried to install one previously and it didn't work and I returned it, but I would like to try again.
I have a 2008 mac pro on ethernet, an xbox on ethernet and a 2007 mbp and two 2009 mbps plus a 3g iphone and a windows xp pc that I can currently use on my Belkin pre-N router with Virgin internet.
The pc has a Belkin usb N adapter for its connectivity.
The system works pretty well but I was wondering if I would get better speed or coverage from an airport extreme.
Two concerns that I have are that the airport extreme seems to be several years old now (2007?) and I am wondering if it is due for an update soon?
Also, to get faster speeds or less interference, will I be able to set the airport extreme to the 5 ghz band and still have connections to all my current hardware?
Thanks for any advice.

Luis Ortega wrote:
Can anyone please suggest some good instruction sites or downloadable files for the airport extreme?
Try this:
http://manuals.info.apple.com/enUS/AirPort_Extreme_Early2009Setup.pdf
The system works pretty well but I was wondering if I would get better speed or coverage from an airport extreme.
That's hard to say. Sometimes speed and/or coverage on the 5 GHz band can be worse than on the 2.4 GHz band, depending on several factors.
Two concerns that I have are that the airport extreme seems to be several years old now (2007?) and I am wondering if it is due for an update soon?
According to Mactracker version 5.2.1 (not the latest version), the newest AirPort Extreme was released in October 2009.
Also, to get faster speeds or less interference, will I be able to set the airport extreme to the 5 ghz band and still have connections to all my current hardware?
The newest AirPort Extreme can use the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz bands at the same time.

Airport extreme doesn't restart, solid amber light

Hi!
I tried to update my airport extreme's firmware and now it doesn't restart. The LED shows a solid amber light, and airport utility doesn't find it.
What can I do?
Thank you very much

alzheimer78 wrote:
Hi!
I tried to update my airport extreme's firmware and now it doesn't restart. The LED shows a solid amber light, and airport utility doesn't find it.
What can I do?
Thank you very much
hola alzheimer78 !
try a +factory restore+ by pulling the unit from power and inserting a paperclip or pointy object into the reset button at the back of the extreme. keep the button pressed while you put the plug back into the outlet. wait until the extreme starts flashing amber rapidly (5-10 seconds) then release the button.
does that work ?

Airport extreme needs manual restarts

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