No AirTunes or Base Station in the Admin Utility on ONE iMac

Question

I have several AirPort Base Stations setup in a single roaming type network. A few of them are AirPort Express models with speakers connected. I can see all my speakers and base stations from the AirPort Admin Utility from all my Macs all the time except one iMac G5.
Most of the time when I reboot this particular iMac G5 (due to a software update, etc.) when it comes back up, it connects to my network and I can surf the web. However, iTunes no longer sees any of the speakers and the AirPort Admin Utility doesn't list any of the base stations. When this happens I have to reboot/shut down/start up the iMac several times before it starts seeing the AirTunes equipped base stations and the airport admin utility sees them.
When this happens I can go to any other Mac and they all see the base stations no problem. So this is limited to just one Mac.
Last night I returned from a vacation. I turned on the iMac G5 and it took about 7 restarts before iTunes would see the speakers. This has been going on for a while on this particular Mac. I thought I had it solved when I reconfigured the account I log on with to be an Admin of that Mac. Then they showed up immediately. However, on the next restart, I had the same problems again.
About my network
5 Express Base Stations with Speakers/Stereos, etc.
1 of the above is connected via WDS (the main AE that is wired and sharing via WDS happens to be the one closest to this iMac.)
1 AirPort Extreme Base Station
The rest are connected via Ethernet.
There is only one network and it is WEP secured (WPA is not an option because of one device on my network that doesn't support WPA)
All other Macs work fine on this network and always see the speakers
The one thing that works sometimes is to shut down the iMac. Then unplug the closest AE (which has the speakers connected to it that the iMac uses the most). Boot up the iMac so that it connects to the next closest base station. Launch iTunes and SOMETIMES it will see the other speakers. I can then plug back in the AE and in a few minutes those speakers show up in iTunes. This is what worked last night after several reboots. However, this doesn't always work the first time.
I'm very tempted just to run an ethernet cable to this iMac and end my frustration, however, I'm curious as to why this is happening and what can be done to fix it? I'd also like to avoid the extra cable.
Any help would be appreciated.
The iMac is a 20" G5 with built-in iSight. All other network ports are turned off so that it only looks for AirPort. I have also tried deleting and re-adding the Preferred network. I have tried logging in as a different user and it still doesn't show the speakers/base stations. The iMac has the latest system/firmware updates.

Answer 1

Hi Terry,
Sounds like a difficult situation.
Is it possible for you to try using a Ethernet cable from your iMac to the nearest Airport Express and then see if you can see/access your Airport Expresses? Wondering if you might be having a problem with the Airport on your iMac.
Is this iMac near another mac that can see/access these Airport Expresses? If not there could be interference problems.
Interference
let us know what happens....
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