Help! Time Capsule Setup Help: Airport Utility Not Finding Wireless Device

Hi folks, I'm hoping some of you more experience Mac techies can help me out. I just bought a (refurbished previous generation) Time Capsule, and I'm trying to set it up for the first time. I don't really have a complicated network configuration-- I'm just going to plug my cable modem into the Time Capsule and use it as the wireless router. The problem is, my Mac's Airport Utility isn't recognizing the Time Capsule after I plug the cable modem into it. The Airport Utility on my MacBook Pro is the latest version (5.5.2) or at least recent enough that it should be compatible with the Time Capsule. Since I can't get the Airport Utility to discover the Time Capsule, I don't know if it's the laptop or the Time Capsule.
Prior to trying to set up the Time Capsule, I was using a very old generation Airport Base Station. I decided to replace it with the Time Capsule because I wasn't getting the connection speeds I wanted, and the old Airport Base Station only offered WEP security. When I tried to configure the old Airport using the Airport Utility, I couldn't get my laptop to discover the router as well. But I just figured it was a problem with the old Airport.
As far as I can tell, the Airport card in my laptop can find wireless network connections just fine. It can see my old Airport Base Station as well as all the other routers in my range. It just can't use the Airport Utility to configure the Airport routers themselves.
I'm a little bit befuddled because it seems like setup should be a no-brainer. Either I've completely overlooked something really simple or something else is really wrong. I've set up a case to get help from Apple techs, but I'd appreciate any insight if anyone has some solutions to share.
Thanks!
Bryan

Welcome to the discussions, Bryan!
I suggest that you "hard reset" the Time Capsule (TC) by holding in the reset button on the TC until until you see the amber light begin to flash more quickly and keep holding another 4-5 seconds when this occurs before you release the reset button.
Give the TC about 30 seconds to stabilize. If you are using wireless to configure the TC, open AirPort Utility and see if it now appears. If not, click the fan shaped Airport icon at the top of your Mac's screen and look for for a wireless network with a name like Apple Network xxxxxx to join. That's the default network that the TC broadcasts so that you can configure it using wireless. Try AirPort Utility again.
If you have a spare ethernet cable handy, temporarily connect it from your Mac to one of the LAN <-> ports on the TC and open AirPort Utility. Once you have the TC configured, you can disconnect the temporary ethernet cable.
See if one of the methods above will get you going. Post back if you need more assistance.

Similar Messages

  • Time capsule disappears from airport utility and finder while wifi still works

    I am connected through my time capsule as wifi router.
    Sometimes, while connected to the TC's wifi, the time capsule disapears from the finder and from the airport utility.
    This leads to my time machine not backing up.

    Thank you for your idea. However, after having imported the setup of the previous TC and having experienced problems, I had already done a factory reset and configured everything from scratch! Without using the profile. So I think we can safely exclude a problem connected with importing the older profile, which was in fact my first idea.
    On the other side, I haven't tried your suggestion to give separate names to the 5 and 2,4 GHz wireless signals. I'll try this evening, as a last attempt before sending the TC back to Apple. BTW, I put my old TC back in place, and apart from the fact that the disk is noisy and almost full it works without a glitch. Which makes a software or configuration issue less likely, I believe.

  • Time Capsule disappears from Airport Utility, need to restart to find it.

    I got a new Time Capsule for Christmas. Our household was using a D-Link router. The network was working fine for a Macbook, iMac, 2 x iPhones, PC Laptop and desktop. The two laptops are upstairs and connect wirelessly to the Time Capsule and an airport Express connected to stereo is set to extend the network.
    Since Christmas the laptops are losing contact with the Time Capsule. At first I'd physically disconnect the modem and TC and the TC would reappear. Finding this annoying I rang Apple. I was told to edit locations in networks, add a location and basically reselect my network. I was told to monitor this, but that it should help. The TC went off airport utility again (the green light was still on), so i went through the process of edit location again and it worked. I posted the problem in macbook internet, thinking it was a macbook issue as my iPhone could still connect to the network and have internet. People suggested i do a power cycle. The next time the network crashed I performed a power cycle on every item connected to the network and turned on in correct order.
    Tonight my macbook and pc laptop lost connection with the internet again. I had to physically take the TC and modem of power to get the network back again.
    This is happening every couple of days, and I'm now sure it's a Time Capsule issue, this issue didn't happen with my D-Link router. I have my Macbook completing Time Machine Backups wirelessly, and when we lose connection with the TC, backups are delayed. Could the Time Machine backups be causing this loss of connection?
    I'm going to call Apple and see if they have another solution, but was checking to see if others have had this problem and maybe a solution?

    I just purchased a new Airport Time Capsule 3TB (ME 182 AM/A)
    I broke my own rules.. as I saw one going really cheap and our currency is dropping like crazy so i thought I better get one .. stupid idea.. it lasted less than week and then refused to even power on.. It has gone back for replacement.
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    Time Capsule keeps losing connectivity

  • Help! Time Capsule set up help: Airport Utility not cooperating

    Hi Everyone,
    I'm desperate for help with this issue. I have a Time Capsule, Base Station and Airport Express (all previous generation)at different points throughout the house. At first the issue was with the base station that refused to find my network so I called the helpdesk and got it fixed and all was well until the next day when the Time Capsule and Airport Express began to malfunction.
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    Thanks,
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    Trinifoto wrote:
    I have a Time Capsule, Base Station and Airport Express
    Welcome to Apple's discussion groups.
    Please identify the "Base Station". Do you mean an AirPort Extreme Base Station? Are all those 802.11n-capable devices?
    the base station wireless mode said 'extend network' the time capsule and airport express wireless mode said 'join network.'
    That suggests to me that none of those devices is your "primary" router. If that's the case, what is the brand and model of the device that's connected to your Internet feed or Internet modem?
    I believed I overdid it on hitting the time capsule's reset button for a soft reset one too many times and now the slow flicker amber light will not steady itself or move to green and the computer is unable to successfully attach itself to our network.
    What does AirPort Utility say about the status of the Time Capsule? (If you have trouble connecting to the Time Capsule with AirPort Utility, try plugging an Ethernet cable from a LAN port of the Time Capsule to the Ethernet port of your MacBook Pro.)
    I've tried to restore the factory default settings but this only results in an error message 'there was an error trying to detect apple wireless devices, make sure network connection is valid and try again.'
    Did you do that reset by holding in the reset button until the status light flashed rapidly several times? Normally after a reset, you have to select the network for that device (usually named in the form "Apple Network xxxxxx") for AirPort Utility to "see" it. That's why an Ethernet cable can be useful.

  • Help! Airport Utility not finding base station

    Hi. I just bought a used Airport Extreme base station on ebay. It's the 4th generation model -- A1354, also known as MC340LL/A. The owner claimed it's in mint condition and working fine.
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    Okay, feel free to disregard. I reset the Airport Extreme a second time and that seemed to do the trick.

  • Time capsule settings in airport utility

    I have a time capsule that I have setup to act as the wireless network for my house and it is also my time machine backup. I know how to protect the data from my backups by protecting the disk that is linked with time machine. However, it seems that anyone who signs on to the time capsules wireless network can (through airport utility) change the settings of the time capsule. I want other people in my house to be able to use the wireless network, but not be able to change settings or create a time capsule back up for their computer. Ultimately I want to be the only one to be able to see any of my time capsule settings in the airport utility. Is there a way I can just set an admin passowrd that is needed to change any settings?
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    You can change the login password to the TC. That will then lock anybody else out from seeing anything in the TC. They do not need to use airport utility to login to wireless.. Apple make this confusing by using airport to cover both the utility, the routers (at least the airport extreme and express) and local wireless client card being called airport. To make a network connection a client computer just needs to put the TC wireless name and password into the appropiate security box in the airport wireless client setup.. networking in system preference. not the airport utility.

  • Time capsule green light - airport utility can't find time capsule

    Hi guys, well here is my story. I struggled to get the TC to connect to my wireless network which is already being provided by a motorola wireless modem. I read somewhere that although 7.3.1 lists support for WEP it doesn't actually support it, so I changed all my security to WPA. Then I got the TC online and all was good, except for the slow transfer times, even from a USB HD that was plugged direct into the TC. So I then plugged in the TC via ethernet and moved the huge amounts of files in much faster succession. Now it's come time to make the TC connect wirelessly again. It just won't do it if I do auto setup, so I do a manual set up. I enter my WPA passwords, I set the TC to bridge mode and low and behold after restart the light on the TC goes green. Hooray!!! Then I go into finder but I can't see the time capsule, so I go to airport utility, it can no longer find the TC it just changed the settings on, that made it connect to the network. Airport utility claims there are no app;e wireless devices to be found...
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    Should I have changed the IPv6 to tunnel or node?
    Also, when I click advanced in wireless the only option I see is for interference robustness, nothing about 2.4 or 5ghz. Where can I change this?
    Any help would be great, cheers.

    I'm having a similar issue, but only sporadically. My TC is plugged directly into my cable modem...it is the only wireless router in the system. The latest firmware updates are installed, and my MacBook Pro has 10.5.2 (installed via the combo update). Another Macbook and a mac mini, both with 10.4, also accesses the wireless network.
    Here's an example of TIme Capsule drop-out: this morning when I woke my Macbook Pro, it couldn't find the network. TC had a green light, so I opened Airport Utility. It couldn't find the TC. I unplugged the TC and waited for it to reboot. After it restarted, the wireless network connected just fine, but the TC itself didn't appear in the finder window. I opened Airport Utility again, and the TC appeared, but with a yellow dot next to it. The light on the TC itself was green. I tried to rescan the port, and the TC disappeared again. Wireless network was still working, though. A few minuted later, I rescanned again and the TC appeared. I clicked on Manual setup, and Airport scanned again and couldn't find the TC. I left it in frustration, and came back two hours later. Voila, the TC appears in the finder window and Airport has no problem accessing it.
    So what the heck? I'm willing to wipe it and start over, but I just installed the thing. All I've done is set up time machine, run the firmware update, plugged in a usb hub with a couple of shared drives and a printer (which doesn't print more than a couple of pages at a time before it freezes, but that's an issue for another post).
    Any thoughts and suggestion greatly appreciated!

  • Why doesn't time capsule appear in airport utility?

    I have the 3TB time capsule just bought last year.  It has been working perfectly fine for all of this time when suddenly my internet connection was slowed to a snails pace.  I reset the modem, the time capsule, etc. and nothing worked.  I called comcast and the guy says the modem is out of sync and he reset it and everything was perfect.  Later that day, it slowed again.  When I called Comcast he said everything is good from the cable side it must be the router (in this case the time capsule).  I opened the airport utility and I was connected to wifi but the time capsule doesnt appear.  It says it cant find any base stations. 
    I googled the web and tried many things including hard reset, updating IPv6 to link-local only, etc.  When I am connected hard wire to the modem it works fine but as soon as i disconnect and go wireless it no longer can find the base station.  The wireless network and speed work fine I just cant connect to the base station for time machine backups, access my drive etc.
    HELP!

    Do a full factory reset.. this is different to hard reset and is recommended when you run into issues.
    Mountain Lion does have a bug with the TC in lossing it. The latest firmware was supposed to fix the problem but I doubt it is working.. ie 7.6.4 ..
    I would do the following.
    1. Take the firmware back to 7.6.1
    You simply hold the option key whilst clicking the number of the version in the airport utility. Select the firmware you want.. and it will do the downgrade.
    2. Factory reset.
    The Factory Reset Gen1-4.
    Unplug your TC. Hold in reset. and power the TC back on.. without releasing reset for about 10sec. When the status light flashes rapidly; release it.
    Be Gentle! Feel the switch click on. It has a positive feel..  add no more pressure after that.
    TC will reboot after a couple of minutes with default factory settings and will wipe out previous configurations.
    No files are deleted on the hard disk.. No reset of the TC deletes files.. to do that you use erase from the airport utility.
    3. Redo the setup with a completely clean set of names.. which are SMB standard.. ie short, 2-20 characters, no spaces and pure alphanumeric.
    Set wireless 5ghz to a different name.
    Set security to WPA2 personal with 8-20 character pure alphanumeric password.
    Set wireless channels manually .. use 11, 6, 1 for 2.4ghz try each in turn in that order.
    Use around 40 and around 150 for 5ghz.
    4. Test with ethernet.. wireless is never a great test. You never know if the issue is somewhere else. Ethernet is more reliable.

  • Time Capsule, Sonos, and Airport Utility Issues

    I have a new Sonos system that is accessing music on my Time Capsule, to which I copied my whole music folder. It works fine from the handheld controller, however the desktop controller will show the library, but won't show me the Zone Players or allow me to control the system. Can only control from the handheld.
    Another problem is while I can access the hard drive on TC, and play music simultaneously on the Sonos, Airport Utility says it can't find any wireless devices (so I can't manually change any settings on the TC), so I can't tinker with its settings and try to get the desktop controller working.
    That being said, the Sonos system seems to work wonderfully, main issue seems to be with the computer.
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    Thank you for your idea. However, after having imported the setup of the previous TC and having experienced problems, I had already done a factory reset and configured everything from scratch! Without using the profile. So I think we can safely exclude a problem connected with importing the older profile, which was in fact my first idea.
    On the other side, I haven't tried your suggestion to give separate names to the 5 and 2,4 GHz wireless signals. I'll try this evening, as a last attempt before sending the TC back to Apple. BTW, I put my old TC back in place, and apart from the fact that the disk is noisy and almost full it works without a glitch. Which makes a software or configuration issue less likely, I believe.

  • Zero KB of 3 TB available (time capsule message) though airport utility says 2.4T free disk space. any idea?

    I do have a 3TB Airport Time Capsule and there is free disk space if I do check on the Airport Utility but also if I add up the disk usage. However, TimeCapsule does not backup anymore. Message I get is "Zero KB of 3 TB available". I did already delete the backup on the Time Capsule and did restart the backup. No success. Any idea?

    You need to compact the sparsebundle.. you might have deleted material but if it is inside a sparsebundle no space is retrieved.
    See the article by Pondini about deleting files.
    http://pondini.org/TM/12.html
    The pink box on issues with the sparsebundle.

  • Time Capsule seen by AirPort Utility, but can't configure (direct Ethernet connection)

    Everything started with a Time Machine error stating that the Sparse Image was not able to be created - support document guided me to check machine name, which for whatever reason had a "(2)" after it.  I edited the name back to the original name without the "(2)", but it made no difference.  Tried restarting the TC, and when it came back up it showed a yellow indicator in AirPort Utility, stating that the TC Disk had errors.  Followed another article saying to erase the disk, and start over.  I initiated the erase, which quickly got to the message "finishing erase...", or the like, and just stayed there for more than 10 minutes.  There was no option to cancel or quit.  Finally gave up and pulled power on TC.  After restarting, and Green indicator came back on, the wireless network was working, but I could no longer get into configure from within AirPort Utility - the operation would just time out after a few minutes with a message saying to make sure it was in range (even though I am connected via Ethernet cable directly to TC).  After trying to disconnect a few more times with no change, and a soft reset did not change anything, I performed a Factory Reset (pulled plug, depressed and held reset button, plugged back in and waited for rapid flashing yellow indicator, released).  Upon Factory Reset the TC again showed up in AirPort Utility with the default name, but again I was unable to configure - same error.  Now networking and wireless still "works", but of course everything is back to defaults, and wide open.
    Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
    Thanks in advance for your support!
    Jeff

    Ok - had to wait until I was back at the location that has this Time Capsule to try your suggestion.  I unplugged the TC for over an hour, then plugged everything back in, and waited for it to show up in AirPort Utility again (TC showing a slow flashing yellow indicator - remember, I have already tried to do a factory reset, or hard reset before my original post).  I depressed the reset button and held it for more than 30 seconds, with no change to the flashing indicator, and nothing changed when I released it either.  I again tried a hard reset by unplugging the TC, (wait a bit), and depressing/holding the reset button, and plugging it back in again.  Soon after that, I get the quick flashing yellow indicator.  Since I didn't get very far with this last week, I continued to hold reset button, and after about 30 seconds it stopped flashing altogether, and stayed off.  I then released the reset button, and the TC restarted, and showed up in AirPort Utility again, but still am unable to go into configure it - it just times out trying to connect, and give the same message:
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    I'm going to take the TC with me this time, and take it to an Apple store, I just know that they are going to say it's dead, and would like to know that I have tried everything else before hand.
    Thanks for your advice, and it you (or anyone else) have any further suggestions, please let me know - it is greatly appreciated.
    Take care!
    Jeff

  • Time Capsule duplicate in Airport Utility

    I factory reset my Time Capsule due to some wireless issues which weren't really resolved,
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    You did not tell us about any troubleshooting steps that you have performed, but a basic power cycle of the network would be the first thing to do if you have not already done this.
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    Power off the entire network....all devices....in any order you wish
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  • HT1281 Where do I find the "Archive" option for Time Capsule disk in AirPort Utility

    HT1281 is exactly about what I am trying to do, but AirPort Utility does not look like this on my Mac (Lion). Where do I find the "Archive" option mentioned here?

    Where do I find the "Archive" option mentioned here?
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    Suggest that you download and install AirPort Utility 5.6 for Mac OS X Lion , which offers far more functionality. This version was introduced on the same day as AirPort Utility 6.0, but apparently many users missed it.
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  • Airport Utility not finding TC

    Hi,
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