Is my AirPort Extreme dead?

I have had AirPort Extreme(g) running in my house since I got my iBook G4 about 18 months ago. When we brought another laptop into the house last year, I added an AirPort Express as a repeater. Worked great for a while.
The other night we noticed we were getting a weak signal from only a few feet away from the Express. The Express was also not appearing under AirPort Utility. I observed a steady, green LED on the Express at this time.
I connected the iBook to the Express via Ethernet cable and checked the settings. Express showed it was set up as a base station and not a repeater. Easy fix I thought...I changed the settings and restarted the Express.
The LED was green for about one second and then went to the dreaded flashing amber. I unplugged the Express for about 30 minutes and plugged it back in...flashing amber. I performed a hard reset and reset all my settings...flashing amber.
Is there anything I might be missing or has my Express ceased to be? I need to know before I spend the money to replace it.
Thanks!

I took the AirPort Express into my local Apple store. They plugged it in and performed a series of hard resets. Eventually, we got a green LED and the unit showed up on their hardware.
I took it home, and configured it for my network.
All is well now.

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Airport Extreme Dead

No internet connection. Checked Airport Extreme and no light on front. Attempted reset and only sign of life is clicking sound from power supply and small green led's next to the Ethernet and LAN ports flashing.
Anyone know if there is any hope of resurrection? Extreme now 3 years old so out of warranty!!

Welcome to the discussion area, ad5901!
Unfortunately, based on your description of the issue, it sounds like there has been an internal component failure on the AirPort Extreme.
The product could possibly be repaired, but the cost of repairs might be difficult to justify compared to the cost of a new or refurbished device. You might want to contact Apple or an Apple Store to see if they could refer you to a repair shop for an estimate on this.

I bought airport extreme to increase coverage in my 2 story home. It uses an ethernet connection. There are dead zones which I had hoped to cover with the addition of the airport extreme, but it didn't help. Any suggestions?

I bought an airport extreme to increase the coverage in my 2 story home. I get good fast coverage in some spots on both floors, but complete dead zones in other areas. The airport extreme did not help. It is connected by ethernet to my cable modem which has a high speed connection. Is there a configuration I should try to help with these dead zones?
Thank you- CC in Minneapolis

Please check out the following AirPort User Tip for details on how to best place your base stations for maximum coverage.

Fitting drive from dead TC into latest AirPort Extreme

I See that the latest AirPort Extreme is the same design as the time capsule and on tear down it shows the empty hard drive bay. My 2012 time capsule has died but the drive is fine so I wondered if I could put it in an AirPort Extreme which wouldn't cost me so much? Any experts out there who can answer this?
MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9)

The Extreme has no hdd fittings.. so if you put the hdd into the extreme you would also need to solder on a surface mount connector.. and obtain the correct cables.. which are non-standard. ie no shop or internet site has the cable you need. So this is fundamentally a hack job beyond the hackers dreams.
Sadly death of the Gen4 hardware is very hard to fix.
If you have a dead Gen4 carcass why not have a go at reflowing the solder.
I gave some instructions here.
https://sites.google.com/site/lapastenague/a-deconstruction-of-routers-and-modem s/apple-time-capsule-repair/gen4-a1409-issues
I have no long term info on if the repair is successful.. It will take a few more goes and a few more successes and a year or two of operation to know if the problem has been solved. I would have pursued Apple to replace it, via purchase of an item on which you could extend warranty via applecare like the Apple TV as I suggested.
If you want to use the hard disk in a TC.. the Gen3 is more reliable. It is the same board as the Gen4 with a somewhat poorer wireless card. You can often pick up second hand Gen3 very cheap.. and use the hard disk in that. The speed over network of Gen3 is same as Gen4 and not that different to Gen5.
Or do what most people do and simply buy a USB holder and use the hard disk in that. You can buy cheap holders for a few dollars from stores like OWC.

Is my Airport Extreme card dead?

Hi all.
I suspect that my Airport Extreme card is dead or dying. The purpose of this post is to find out if any of you can advise me otherwise, or tell me how to test it, or point out that I've missed something.
Here's the problem in short: it usually fails to find my network. (It finds lots of others, which are locked or not useful to me). When it does find it, it usually fails to connect. When it succeeds in connecting, it usually drops the connection after a few seconds or minutes. When it succeeds in holding the connection for a short while, it drops it when I sleep the machine.
All of these symptoms are variable: some days it'll find the network fairly quickly, some days it never will.
Why do I think the problem is the Airport Extreme card? Because:
- I can connect to the network with my iPhone, and with two other laptops (one Powerbook, one Macbook). It works just fine for them.
- I can share my Powerbook's internet connection via ethernet (the Powerbook using Airport to connect to the network) and that works just fine. That's what I'm doing right now.
- It's been getting worse for ages now, slowly deteriorating.
Having checked through this post here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2227197
I reckon
System Profiler gives the following information:
Wireless Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0x4E)
Wireless Card Locale: Unknown
Wireless Card Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (4.170.25.8)
So, have I missed anything? And, more usefully:
1) Is there something else I can try?
2) If I have to buy a replacement card, does it have to say 0x14E4, 0x4E on it or can I use anything that says Airport Extreme? Having read this page http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3024 I think I can get any Airport Extreme card. Is that right?
Thanks in advance!
Jason

What kind of Powerbook is it?
I doubt the card is at fault. The symptoms you describe are consistent with wireless interference, but given the fact your other devices don't appear to be similarly afflicted, it's possible the card's antenna connections have become dislodged, corroded, or dirty. Re-seating the connection may help.
The only way to test the card is to find another wireless network, ideally one that's out of range of other networks, such as you might find in a coffee shop, library, or hotel, and observe your Powerbook's performance with it. The proliferation of wireless devices is making this task increasingly difficult - the limited electromagnetic spectrum for wireless devices is a rapidly diminishing natural resource.
If you want to try a new card, you must replace it with the one on the support page you referenced.

Dead usb port in airport extreme

I have been using the airport extreme for quite a while but it seems that my usb port is not working anymore since my external drive (connected via usb) was suddenly disconnected.
I don't see the drive recognized anymore in the airport extreme settings. I was trying two other drives and those were also not recognized. I'm sure that the drive are OK because I am able to connect those via usb on other laptops.
What could be wrong? When I plug in my Freecom Tough Drive the blue light of the drive is switched on for short while before it turns of without any connection to the airport. Resetting the airport didn't help as well. I have not changed the firmware or run any updates...It seems that I have to return the device or can I try some other things?
Please advice.

It is entirely possible to have a dead port. What have you done to verify? If you plug into all the other ports and the unit is recognized through Airport Utility, but not the one suspected, that's a good indication. Also plug into each port one-by-one and look for the green light to show on the port connector. If it doesn't show on the suspect port, that's more support of indicating a dead port. You can also unplug the power to the unit, then plug it back in, watching for the port light on the suspect connector to flash green along with all the others. The lack of a green light is not a certain indicator, but almost so. Probably a warranty issue.

Dead Airport Extreme card?

For the last three days I have had issues with my G5 dual 2GHz and OS X 10.4.2, the latest updates to Airport software and firmware.
The signal strength meter in the menu bar or in Internet Connect is greyed out and the connection cannot be made -- eventually it gets to the point where the G5 cannot even remember any of my precvious connections. The Macwireless.com widget shows the connection and signal strength as bouncing from 0 to about 70% for all connections that are still recognized, with each location bouncing from the top of the list to the bottom and then sometimes disappearing altogether. After a short while the locations don't reappear... Once they're gone, they're pretty much gone without a trace (Airport Admin either cannot connect to the Airport, telling me an error occurred while trying to access it, or it doesn't see anything to get an error message from).
My G4 sits right next to the G5 and has shown no problems. Strangely, after a full day trying to troubleshoot this, the G5 started up today at full signal strength -- I'm using it now to write this message! Nothing has changed on this machine in the past week, except for me trying to get the Airport Extreme Card to function as it had for the month or two I've had it. Yesterday I lost connection altogether -- neither restarting the Mac nor a full shut down, wait a minute or two, restart would restore my connection. At one point, I shut down the machine for about an hour while I reseated the AE Card and let the computer become room temp (roughly 70 F). Still no go...
After eliminating all the variables I could think of, I've come to the conclusion that the Airport card is probably bad -- possibly malfunctioning with heat build-up (?). Problem is, how do I show this problem to a tech? Especially since it's a half-hour drive to the closest Apple store and longer to a third-party Apple repair shop. And knowing that once it's been off for a while and is on a workbench, it will behave like all intermittently faulty equipment and work perfectly. :-/
If anyone has trouble shooting suggestions, or can help me determine for sure that the card is the problem, please help!

Hi Julia,
Well, the card may have problems too, but I now think there's a software problem as others have suggested. It's odd because everything seemed fine for some time after applying the updates, so it appeared as if the card was bad or going bad. For me, I spent three days trying everything I could, including removing and re-seating the card, antenna wire and antenna, trying various configurations, resetting the Airport itself and so on. All to no avail.
On the last day, I had the strangest situation, where Mail could not see the Airport and could connect to nothing, but Safari was able to access the Internet! I used Safari to access sites I hadn't visited in months just to be sure I wasn't seeing cached versions of the pages... Eventually though, Safari lost contact, and that was it for the day.
After all that, the next day I turned on the Mac to see a solid connection that's been stable ever since except for the incident in my previous post where the Airport widgets knocked the connection out. Turning off those Widgets and closing Dashboard brought the connection back up immediately -- I haven't tried them again, and probably won't!.
Once I had the solid connection, I used Onyx to repair permissions, optimise the System and to empty the Network cache. I also deleted the various Locations I'd set up in the Network Preferences to get it back to just the one connection to choose from. If you're comfortable with Onyx (or Cocktail or one of the other utilities) you could try at least clearing the cache(s) and repairing permissions.
Have you tried a complete shut down and leaving the computer off overnight? Do you have anything set to open on startup that may try to connect with the Internet (like Mail or Safari)? Try removng them from your Startup Items (you can do this from the Dock -- click and hold on the icon and a mini menu should pop up with that option).
Have you looked at the info in System Profiler, and does it show the Airport card? (you can access System Profiler from the About This Mac item in the Apple Menu and clicking the button: More Info...) The card should show up under Network>Airpport Card.
Since you have a Powerbook, you have the option to take your computer to an Apple tech (Apple Genius at an Apple store, or to a dealer with a repair crew) and have them troubleshoot it. My guess is they'll end up reinstalling your OS and/or replacing the card... My G5 is far too heavy for me to throw it in the car -- and I found out the hard way yesterday that my computer is just 2 weeks out of warranty, so I'm ineligible for AppleCare. grrr... (my fault, but grrr...)
Let us know if anything good happens -- best of luck!

Airport Extreme Base: Is it dead?

Without notice my Airport Extreme base will not respond. I mean, like in when I plug it in there are no blinking or any other kind of lights.
My questions:
Is it user serviceable?
What should I be looking for?
Are some components more subject to failure than others?
Is it time to buy a new one?
Thanks for your insights and suggestions.
cornelius

Hi cornelius!
Is it user serviceable?
Possibly. Check out the following article to see what's in store: Airport Extreme Dissected!
What should I be looking for?
Basically, you'll find that there is an AirPort Extreme card inside. This is about the only user-serviceable part.
Are some components more subject to failure than others?
With the AirPort Extreme, the most common failures are either the AirPort Extreme card or the power brick. Based on your description, I'd suspect that it might be the brick.
Is it time to buy a new one?
Although the cost of either a replacement AirPort Extreme card or power brick may not be exorbitant, it may be better to invest in the newer 802.11n AirPort Extreme.

Dead AirPort Extreme?

Fellas,
I got a new AirPort Extreme 4 months ago. It was working like a dream.
Now it suddenly died. I followed the manual:
"To return AirPort Extreme to the factory settings:
Use the end of a straightened paper clip to press and hold the reset button until the status light flashes quickly (about 5 seconds).
If your base station is still not responding, try the following:
1 Unplug AirPort Extreme.
2 Use the end of a straightened paper clip to press and hold the reset button while you plug in AirPort Extreme."
No dice. Yeah, I made sure the outlet was OK. No, I didn't move it: same place, jack, & outlet.
What gives? No light at all.

Hey, mine just did the same thing. Got home last evening ( Sept 24, 2010) and no light on the base!
What's up! I've had it since July. Going to the store tomorrow for sure.

Airport Extreme: Alive One Day, Dead the Next

Last night my Airport Extreme Base Station stopped sending out an internet signal. I can see it with my laptop, but there is no internet signal coming through. When I take the ethernet cable out of the Airport and plug it directly to my laptop, the internet works.
I sat on the phone with Time Warner tech support for almost an hour going through their recommendations. I have also reset the Base Station. The signal is strong and everything appears to be working except for the signal. I can't think of anything else.
Any ideas as to why the Base Station would suddenly stop working?
MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Sometimes it may require you to reset your entire system.
Pull the Power adapter from both your ISP's Modem
and your Router, turn off your computer, making sure you have Airport selected in the System Prferences and Network settings, and on the top of the list and you have the little green dot.
Plug in the ISP's Modem and wait one minute.
Plug in your Router and again wait one minute.
Now start your computer.
You should be connected now.
Don

How to set-up new Airport Express to extend range of Airport Extreme

Purchased a new Airport Express to use it as a range extender on existing home network with an operating Airport Extreme base station. While I've read instructions, I'm unclear whether the Express needs to be connected by ethernet cable for its initial setup, or can I simply plug it and initialize it wirelessly onto the same household network? (I've tried the latter but without success).

to edex67 and Bob Timmons:
My objective is to extend the wireless range of the Airport Extreme base station wirelessly - so I do appreciate that the Airport Express would needsto be located haflway between the base station and the "dead zone" area.
The suggestion of using a Powerline ethernet connection to the Airport Express has merit (especially as I have one available).
I continue to use OSX 10.6.8 - does this affect my set-up in any way?
My problem had been - and remains - how to configure the Airport Express in range extend mode - I did click these boxes on both the Extreme base station and the Express, however the Express still has flashing amber lights and error codes - one indicating no internet availability on the Airport Express.

How do I know "Roaming Network" is working with Airport Express and Airport Extreme and should I use extended wireless network for third Express?

Attempting to eliminate a dead spot in Wifi coverage [and implement AirPlay] have one Airport Extreme 802.11n and two Airport Express 802.11n's.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4145
The Airport Extreme is of course connected to cable modem and Ethernet switch, and one Airport Express is connected to the Ethernet network. As per instructions for creating a "Roaming Network", Airport Express is set to same SSID, security type, and Password.
Questions:
1. How does the client device know which Airport to connect to? In other words, will it switch to the closer WiFi transmitter automatically? The WiFi reception problem is intermittent in the fringe areas so what I do not want it for it to stick with the more distant Airport Extreme in the basement when the Airport Express which is closer will work better.
2. How can I tell which of the Airports the attached client device is using?
The third Airport Express will be in a third location - I was planning on using it also for expanding coverage but after reading the warnings about performance suffering when purely using WiFi for the expansion in this location ("Wireless Extended Network" without an ethernet connection) I have figured that the single wired Airport Express will be adequate and will use the third Express to do Airplay only.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4259
Question: Can I use this second Airport Express to extend the wireless network via "Extended Wireless Network" while the other two are in "Roaming Netowrk" configuration? Without bogging down??
Mitch

1. How does the client device know which Airport to connect to?
The Mac computer will automatically connect to the wireless access point with the strongest signal...which is probably the closest AirPort. An iPhone or iPad may not do this and will tend to stay connected to one AirPort.
2. How can I tell which of the Airports the attached client device is using?
On a Mac, open Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities > AirPort Utility. Click on one of AirPorts. In the area to the right, locate the AirPort ID and jot that down. Then do the same for your other AirPort.
Move your Mac near one of the AirPorts and log on to the wireless. Hold down the option key on the Mac while you click the fan shaped AirPort icon at the top of the screen. Look for the BSSID. That is the AirPort ID of the device to which you are connected.
If you are close to the "remote" AirPort, and you see the AIrPort ID of the "main" router when you are testing, then you know that the network is not configured correctly.
Can I use this second Airport Express to extend the wireless network via "Extended Wireless Network" while the other two are in "Roaming Netowrk" configuration? Without bogging down??
There will be a modest 10-15% bandwidth loss with the "extend" setup, assuming that the Express is located where it can receive a strong wireless signal from the AirPort to which it is associated. You can avoid the bandwidth loss if the Express is also connected via Ethernet as part of the roaming configuration.

How can I set up a back up hard drive on airport extreme

I have an external harddrive that was plugged into my airport extreme. Apple seemed to eliminate my abilty to back up wirelessly in one of the updates. How can I set this up again? Does anyone know a way around this?
Thanks,

Ah, I remember those links now. I was thinking something along the lines of:
Never consider any computer a data storage device, rather a data creation ,sending, and manipulation device. Anyone who thinks data is safe on any computer, even copied upon multiple partitions is making a mistake.
Never backup your data exclusively upon magnetic hard drives or flash storage, nor consider same since magnetic storage degrades over time even under ideal conditions.
Store important data on multiple servers on multiple continents.
Burn important data onto multiple copies of archival DVDs and store same in cool dark fireproof safes, multiple places.
Don’t burn data onto junk DVD’s purchased from consumer level electronics stores. These are not archival long life DVD’s nor reliable, nor trustworthy. Archival DVD blanks such as Taiyo Yuden, rated for 100+ years are what the pros use, these are made by JVC and are professional grade DVD blanks.
Most people have never heard of archival DVDs, however their cost is only 30% more than junk-level DVD blanks which are only rated for 5-10 years. Also the reject rate on the inferior DVD is around 15%, the cost is almost identical between the WORST DVD blanks and the BEST DVD blanks.
Most importantly know that 2 copies of your data is 1, and 1 is none, and 1000 copies stored in one place or building, is also the same as none due to possible fire.
Always consider and expect your computer’s hard drive to completely crash anytime, at all times, and you should keep a cloned and updated hard drive handy at all times to return to immediate productivity and utterly avoid programs and parameter reinstallation. Nothing is quicker than taking out a dead HD and tossing in a new updated cloned HD for getting back to 100% in under 20 mins!
Decentralized Omnipresent Data (D.O.D.)
(something I coined an age ago)
Backing up data to:
Multiple HD in multiple locations
On multiple servers on multiple continents, private and public websites, anonymous data farms. (very easy actually)
Burned onto archival optical and magnetic storage
Have unclassified data possessed by multiple people in multiples places.
When your data becomes both everywhere and nowhere, accessible to all, destructible by none, cannot be collected together or permanently retrieved under any circumstances, you have Decentralized Omnipresent Data (D.O.D.) protection rivaling that of large governments.

How do I find the IP address of a wireless printer (via bonjour) on my Airport Extreme?

I can see the MAC address of my macbook and the printer using the AirPort Utility, but I can't find the actual IP. Attempting to connect through the printer utility puts:http://hp88388e.local./ in the URL, but the page just hangs. isn't there a numerical address associated with the printer? how can I find it?

Thanx for the help! It was not the problem, however. I fixed the issue. Here is what happened:
Because the HP D110 printer was set up manually with the previous UBEE wireless router cable modem, the printer's IP address stayed fixed at 192.168.0.238 even after I performed a "factory reset" through the touch-screen menu. bonjour is apparently able to "see" the printer, and even establish a physical layer of communication with the printer, but it is unable to transfer data to and from the printer. Thus, while the network detected and could establish a link, no tasks could be accomplished (i.e. ink levels, paper out, actual printing, etc). additionally, the link to go to the printer webpage was dead (that was my first clue).
I tried hooking it up via the USB port on the airport extreme, and it would work perfectly. After I set it up, it automatially printed a test page and I discovered that it was still 192.168.0.238 - even though the airport extreme had it listed in the logs as 10.0.1.3. I figured that was the problem, but I was still unable to log into the printer webpage to reset the IP on the printer side.
Because I was unable to force the airport extreme to assign the printer to the existing address, I had to keep playing around with the on-screen menu. Evenually I found that inside the wireless menu, there is an option to reset all wireless parameters, and once I did this, I deleted the printer and added it again from the print/fax utility. this time, it worked wirelessly, and the printer web page could be accessed.
As an aside, the apple interface to the print/scan/fax settings were far smoother, faster, and more intuative than the HP utilities written by HP on windows! Hope this helps anyone who is also stuck.

Airport Extreme no longer connects to internet ****

I really hope somebody can help me. I've searched the forum and believe I've tried everything suggested to others having similar issues.
I've never had any issues with my Airport before this past week when suddenly my broadband connection went dead (Charter Cable). I was able to get a signal to the modem as it appeared the cable was disconnected outside so I reattached. I've talked to the tech support people who were able to "see" that my modem was online but wireless was not working.
I have reset the Airport Extreme, I have reset the cable modem (Scientific Atlanta), I have unplugged both for up to 2hrs, I have deleted and reinstalled the airport software, I have tried starting a new location in network preferences. The green light glows green on the Airport but I still get errors ranging from 'you appear to not have a valid internet connection to perhaps you typed the url incorrectly'. I have even tried setting up a brand new Airport up with the same result. I have tried using other wifi devices to connect, select my network, I get full wifi connection (bars) but still nothing.
If I plug directly via ethernet cable from modem to macbook I have no problems.
I spent 2 hours on the phone with apple yesterday and they were not able to figure it out. We were able to see a valid looking IP address, select my network, etc and nothing. My internet provider is adamant that this is not their problem. I've also tried two different cable modems from the cable company. For five years I've had no issues and for some inexplicable reason getting wireless to work is like trying to land on the moon now.
Any ideas?

Hi everyone,
I called Apple today and found the solution to my problem. The cable modem was not sending the correct IP address to the Airport. You can tell by opening the Airport Admin program, selecting internet from the tabbed menu and looking at the IP address. If it ends in ".169" that is bad. So, close the Airport Admin program, turn off the cable modem, wait 20-30 seconds, turn it on again and wait for it to power up. After another 30 seconds, open the Airport Admin and select the internet tab. The IP address should be different and..... now it works! The person helping me at Apple says he has to do this about once a month for some reason.
Hope this helps others, ellen

Is my AirPort Extreme dead?

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