Before I give up on AirPort Express for good

Question

I have two AirPort Express base stations which are behaving in exactly the same way, which is to say they won't talk to the world. Even attempting such tends to put both AirPort Admin Utility and AirPort Setup Assistant into a very bad (i.e. spinning-disc, force-quit-needed) mood, or at best the dreaded "An error occurred communicating with the selected base station."
I am told that I can perform a factory default reset as follows:
" 1. Unplug the AirPort Express from the power outlet.
2. Press and hold the reset button.
3. Plug AirPort Express back into an AC outlet (still holding the button).
4. Continue holding the button until you see the light flash green four times, which should happen after a few seconds.
5. Release the button."
I've done this many times with both units. The lights do not behave as decribed: there is a lightning-quick green flash, then a solid amber. After maybe 20 seconds after releasing the button, the solid amber changes to flashing, and it never comes back.
There seems to be just no communicating with these things. I've tried both crossover and regular Ethernet cables. I've tried changing IP addresses on both of my laptops -- which are working fine wirelessly with my third and only functioning AirPort Express, which is connected to the DSL router -- as best I can discern from the support documents. I've done this for many hours over several months while pondering those docs, and the next thing I'm going to try is throwing these little disasters against the wall and watching them shatter into hopefully at least "X" pieces. It won't exactly make me happy, but at least it will be a resolution of sorts.
In truth, even when it was working, this product was a disappointment. It was somewhere while trying to resolve its flaws that the amber flash of death began. I was hoping to use one machine with a large external hard drive as a music server, wire-connected to an Express, to talk wirelessly to a local laptop, which would then talk wirelessly to the stereo in whatever room I was in. Surely, a truly smart network could arrange to send the music directly from the server to the stereo, bypassing the intermediate machine. Yet Apple's is not such a network, and the audio dropouts from the two consecutive wireless transmissions (which were each only one room apart) became too much to be tolerated, and I began messing with things.
Perhaps I messed too much...yet, surely, there must be a way to start again. I've got two laptops which are happily talking to an AirPort Express which is happily talking to the Internet via my DSL router, and two other AirPort Expresses which aren't talking to anything. Is there any way to save this union? Any advice would be very, very much appreciated at this point.
MacBook Pro   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

Answer 1

you are just too confused right now. there's nothing wrong with the two express routers. its just a relationship of hardware to the software, which the user must come to grips.this is just the way it it with these routers. What would I do(since I've had the problem but since have learned to deal with it) reset the Express and I use a wireless Mac to "find" the routers---which must be selected under the Airport icon BEFORE using any Airport Utility to confirgure the routers. I don't use the setup assistant but configure the routers manually. Yes you may have to reset and or unplug the Express to do the above but sooner or later you must learn the oddities about it anyway. Remeber you did introduce some other variation to the routers and the software setup.
If you can't find your network name under Airport icon then use your system preferences/Netwrok/Airport/preferred drop down menu. If found there then select and apply then select under Airport icon then use the utility. If not found then use the + button and if that does not work then type in the network name. Bottom line all of the above countermeasures have never failed me on the Exprexx and the new Extreme routers. Its just a learning experience. Maybe Apple could have made the experience easier to use or maybe that's the way it is but I got mine up and running soild for 2 months now with out issues. Power failure they just come back on I do nothing except reset my Vonage by unplugging it for a minute. Hope this helps you and don't give up.