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.

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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.
For your situation I think the problem is not the TC as much as it is yosemite.. but it is the combo.
Try the things I have suggested in this thread.. they have worked or helped other people.
Time Capsule keeps losing connectivity

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.

Where did my AEBS go??? AEBS disappears from AirPort Utility

I have set up my new AirPort Base Station using the Airport Utility but once it is setup it disappears from the utility. I am able to use the AEBS as an ethernet router for my mini HOWEVER my secondary MacBook is only able to "find" the wireless signal periodically. It is not a distance problem since the two computers and the routers are in the same small bedroom!
Any suggestions to improve performance? Reliability? I am beginning to think that I was better off with my not so fast Airport Extreme. . .

Thanks for the quick response! I will not discount the idea that I made a mistake in the setup but I have not duplicated any of the names or passwords in the setup.
I also thought that maybe there could have been that type of issue so I reset the AEBS and used the Airport Utility to set up the router again (it seems like whenever I setup a router at home it takes at least two tries before I get all the steps right. . . so it was not a big deal).
After completing Airport Utility on my mini everything looked great, then without any action on my part the AEBS DISAPPEARED from Airport Utility!!! It makes sense to me that if the utility cannot see the AEBS then the MacBook is going to have problems too. . .
Any other plans of action? My partner, the MacBook user, is voting for taking the **** thing back even though I am really liking the much faster ethernet connection. . .

I have Airport Extreme (802.11ac), which disappears from Airport Utility

Why does it disappear? I am not further than 50 feet from AE and it flips out! AE is connected to a switch from ISP located floor below my apartment that only works if set to "Bridge Mode" on network settings tab. I am trying to use connected 1TB drive to stream movies to AppleTV that is not 50 feet away from AE. When AE disappears from Airport Utility, I still have connectivity to web via Wi-Fi, but I cannot stream from HD. Very frustrating!!!! Running MBA with all software updated. Any thoughts?

Are you running Yosemite on your MBA? If so, this may be the culprit. There are a number of posts here describing this exact issue. At present there doesn't seem to be a solution. Even the latest OS X build 10.10.1 did not seem to resolve it. One theory going around is that this may be due to a conflict between the Bonjour protocol and the AirPort Utility. Some have tried temporarily disabling their OS X software firewall which appears to work ... BUT not consistently ... nor would I recommend it.

I have a airport time capsule, an older airport extreme, and an airport express. I want to hard wire my Mac Mini to the network. What is the best arrangement of the devices? which ones should be hard wired to optimize extending the network?

I have a airport time capsule, an older airport extreme, and an older airport express. I want to hard wire my Mac Mini to the network. What is the best arrangement of the devices? which ones should be hard wired to optimize extending the network?

I am using TM Unifi with an ASUS RT-N18U Wi-Fi router. I would like to know could I use Apple AirPort Time Capsule to extend (repeater, booster) my Wi-Fi to a part of the house where the Wi-Fi signal is poor
Yes,, if you plan to connect the AirPort Time Capsule to the ASUS router using an Ethernet cable connection that will remain fixed and permanently installed at all times.
No, if you were planning to have the AirPort Time Capsule connect wirelessly and extend the Asus WiFi signal, since it would not be compatible with another manufacturer's router for that purpose.
Another way of saying the same thing here would be that if you want to extend the network wirelessly, it will take two Apple routers to do so

Had a Airport Express connected to my stereo and it was working. I brought an Airport Extreme and suddenly it took over and Airport Express stopped working and disappeared from Airport Utility. What I am supposed to do? ar2ro

I have an Airport Express connected to my stereo and it was working without any problem.
Recently I bought an Airport Extreme to use it as my Base Unit connecting it to my DSL.
I followed the instructions of the Airport Utility, and it started working.
Suddenly, problems started happen the Airport express that was connected to the stereo , stopped working and it disappeared from the Airport Utility area , as it did not exist in the network. I tried to reset it but it did not appear in the Airport Utility page.
Apparently I have other problems with the private network that it created because I cannot use it because of problems with the password that was created. I can only use the network that I created for my guest...
I dont know if my problem is a configuration problem or there is problem with the equipment.
I read that other users where having the same problem with the Airport express , using non apple equipment as their base unit , but I thought that using the Airport Extreme was going to be compatible and no problems would happen.
What should I do?

Common Problem. Common solution.
Connect your Express via ethernet cable to the Mac while other network connections on the Mac are switched OFF.
After the Express shows up, change the settings of the Express to join the existing network. Take the appr. settings.
Unplug and reconnect your Mac to the network.
Check if the Express shows up in Airport Utility
Alternative solution:
Hardreset the Express to factory settings
(while on power push the Pin next to the audio plug with a paperclip. Plug out the Express still holding down the little button then replug the Express to power and release button)
After that, the Express will show up in the Airport Utility.
Make all needed settings.
I would prefer the first solution, its easier just to plug a cat5 cable.

Time Capsule disappears from network

Hi,
I'm using a 2Tb Time Capsule (version 7.6.4), both for backing up my Mac mini and the iMac of my wife, as well as to create the LAN/WLAN at home. I never experienced any problems with it, until starting a few days ago the TC disappears from the network every now and then.
The funny thing is that the green LED is still on while the TC is 'gone', as well as internet access works without problems. After a couple of minutes the TC returns as if nothing would have happened. In case a scheduled backup is initiated while the TC is 'absent', I get an error message from the Time Machine, saying that it didn't find the backup disk. I restarted the TC once, but it didn't help.
Cheers
Christopher

I have been having this issue the last few weeks. TimeMachine reports that it is unable to complete hourly backups and Airport Utility reports the prior seen TC cannot be found.
I have reset each device several times.
Tonight I ran Airport Utility and left it on and the Airport TC alternately reports "Device Not Found" (Internet light is green, Airport light is orange) and then a minute or two later "Reading Settings on Airport" (with both lights green). It then reverts to Device not Found.
This TC has been working just fine for the last 8 or 9 months since I bought it.
Is there a utility of some sort that I could run to check the integrity of the hardware?

Time Capsule disappears from device list when wireless is toggled

When I toggle wireless on and off, either via profile or Airport > Wireless, sometimes my base station disappears from the list of devices in Airport Utility:
Has anyone else seen this? My Time Capsule reappears after I close and reopen Airport Utility.

I may not be understanding what you mean but unless you have the TC connected via ethernet it will disappear when you turn airport off, it would come back up when you turn it on but it may take a few minutes.

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 disappears from network, but still routes. Forced to reboot.

My Time Capsule (approx 3 months old) operating properly for about 2 months, routing and Time Machine for 2 Macs.
Recently it has started disappearing from the network, Airport Util and Time Machine. After a reboot, everything will appear fine, but after a 5-15 days or so, it will just vanish again. It will still route network traffic just fine, but is not accessible.
7.5.1
WPA2 Personal
1 USB printer attached
Internet is standard sharing, no DHCP issues
TC disk is available and working
Only odd things:
I did play around with the workgroup on the TC a few times, as Windows comps were having major problems talking to eachother. No longer an issue (winpc's off network) and should not be related.
In the DHCP clients list, there are 2 IPs assigned to clients with the name of the Time Capsule. They both have MAC addresses too (huh?). All other machines connected to the network are accounted for already. I'm assuming this is some function of the TM backup process, as the TC is backing up 2 machines on that network.
I have not tried a hard reset yet, but if this happens again (4 times now, I'm sure it will happen again) I will hard reset and see what happens. I just don't see any reason it should vanish after a week.

you could be suffering from wireless interference.
perhaps one of your neighbor's wireless networks is interfering with yours. download iStumbler and note the channels other networks in the vicinity are broadcasting on.
change the channel your network is using as far away as possible from those.

Time Capsule disappears from desktop

Hello,
since the last update to version 7.6.3 Time Capsule disappears after about 150 seconds from the desktop. This disturbs my workflow quite strong, because I use the Time Capsule not only as a Time Machine backup, but also as a network storage. Where can I set that the Time Capsule will remain permanently on the desktop?
Thank you for your kind assistance.
Franz
PS: Please excuse my bad english.

Hi Jay,
1. start the Airport-Utility
2. click on „Manual Setup“
3. click on „Version“ („Overview“ Sreen –> third row)
4. choose the Firmware Version you want to install
After downgrading the Time Capsule restarts automatically and does no longer disappear from the desktop after a while.
Although I am not an english native speaker I hope that the guidance is understandable.
Greetings from Cologne, Germany
Franz

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...
Please help, how do I discover my TC?
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!

AirPort Time Capsule disappears from network

I purchased an AirPort Time Capsule (2T) and installed it to our home network. We have Verizon Fios, are connected to the internet via the Verizon router, etc. I installed the Time Capsule per the instructions and our 2 MacBook airs found the Time Capsule. So did our IPads. I also connected our 2 IPhones to the newly created Wi-Fi network.
My main,home PC did find the Time Capsule, which is why I originally purchased the unit - to provide Wi-Fi back-up for our files, music, pictures, etc. Once found, I also changed my PC Wi-Fi settings to use my new network to connect to the internet.
I also copied some of my files to the 'data' section of the Time Capsule - the pictures took 8 hours to copy. Afetr completing this, I put my PC into hibernate and went to bed.
The next morning, my PC did not find or connect to the Time Capsule, but it is using the Time Capsule Wi-Fi for internet connections.
The Time Capsule appeared on it's own after about 15 minutes, but will not appear now and I do not know how to find it to re-connect and be found by my main HP PC. I have rebotted my PC several times and this does not work. I have also tried changing back to my old Wi-Fi connection and then re-connecting to the new network - also does not find the Time Capsule.
Does anyone know what I have to do so that the AirPort Time Capsule shows and is connected all of the time to the network, as seen by my main PC?
My MacBook airs seem to stay connected.
Thanks,
Jim

No, I did not know this and am installing it as I type.
I did notice that when I first re-boot my PC from the hibernate mode, the Time Capsule is not there in my network, but shows up in about 10 to 20 minutes (estimate). It has shown up each and every time I have used the PC. Awfully strange - when I commented on this forum originally, it did not show up for an hour or so; thus, I asked for help. Now - it shows up each time even if late or takes some time to discover.
Thus, I believe there might be some sort of 'search and find' function, that adds the wi-fi capable Time Capsule once found.
As long as it keeps showing up, as it is now, even if late, I will live with it.
I have been out of hibernate mode for about 10 minutes now - I just looked and Time Capsule is there.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Jim

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?
Apple left this out (along with a number of other features and functions) in the new "upgraded" AirPort Utility.
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.
You can keep both 5.6 and 6.0 on your Mac and use the one that you want.

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

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