Unable to find base station

I just got a Mac Pro and Airport Extreme 802.11n Base Station. I was able to set up the AEBS using the Mac Pro (running Leopard), and am able to connect to it using the Mac Pro without any problems. I also updated the firmware on the AEBS. Unfortunately, I am unable to connect to the AEBS using my laptops. I have a Macbook Pro and a Titanium Powerbook, both running 10.4.11. When I try to connect to the AEBS using Airport Utility 5.2.1 with either laptop, I get an "unable to find base station" message. Both laptops are in the same room as the Mac Pro (about 30' from the AEBS, which is in another room), and both are fitted with the original Apple Airport cards. I realize that I could install Leopard on the laptops to see if that did the trick, but I'd rather not go to all the trouble if I can help it. Any suggestions as to what may be wrong with the laptop setups that's interfering with my Airport reception? Thanks.

Is the Mac Pro connected wirelessly or via a cable? I am guessing it is wired since you have to pay extra for the wireless.
In your configuration make sure you have not enabled "Create a closed network". This turns off the SSID and will not allow it to be found by the laptops. And of course make sure you have not set Wireless Mode to OFF.
Beyond that to test for interference you can change the radio mode to 802.11n (802.11a Compatible) and see if the Macbook Pro will work. This will force the Airport to use the 5GHz radio which removes most interference.
Hope this helps

Similar Messages

Setup Assistant unable to find base station

Ok I am new to wireless so here goes. I have a iMac G5 2.0 running 10.4. I just bought the base station today. I am trying to use dsl with PPPoE. I have checked those settings about a 100 times. The same settings and cable I am using to post here to this forum thru ethernet.
I plug in the base and when I get the flashing amber it is recognized in the internet connet app with a full signal strength. If I try to connect it tells me it cannot locate the server.
When I try the setup assist app and select 'Set up a new Airport Base Station' and hit continue. it immediately say it found a new Airport Express base station and includes the name. But when I hit continue again it takes a minute to think the brings up a error message. '...unable to find your base station.
I also come up empty with the Airport Admin utility. Nothing shows in it.
I hope someone can help. Thanks.
Jeffrey Dalton

Whether or not a sound system is plugged into the Airport Express has no influence on the generation of this error message by the Airport Setup Assistant.
I have a distinct feeling I'm going to be reiterating everything the people at Mac support told you to do (so it would be helpful to tell us at the start what you have tried thus far to solve the problem) but the next thing I would recommend is a factory default reset of the Airport Express per:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=108044
The other thing that can cause all sorts of grief is any non-Apple firewall software you might have installed on this Mac - that includes firewalls, "internet protection" software, and VPN client software. The MacOS built in firewall is OK - but all this other baggage should either be disabled or uninstalled.

Airport Utility 4.2.5 unable to find base station Snow m8440

Hello
I have Airport Base Station "Snow" M8440 - My Airport Utility on Tiger (10.4.11) se it but I decided to do reset to factory defaults like here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3728?viewlocale=en_US
And now Airport Base Station is not visible - My Powerbook G4 see WiFi but Airport Utility don't see Base Station :/ what can I do? (10.5.8) does not see to.
- Powerbook G4, 1.5 GHz, Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11 or 10.5.8
- Airport Base Station M8440
Please help!

https://discussions.apple.com/message/11998955#11998955
Don't know if this will help. Good luck!

IMac could not 'find' base station. (Previously working)

Today I found that my iMac (20" Core 2 Duo with built in Airport card) was not talking to my Airport Extreme 802.11n base station.
The base station had a green light and was talking OK with another machine upstairs so there was nothing wrong with the internet connection (or the cable broadband router) or the base station.
I re-booted the iMac but still no connection. I scanned for base stations from the Airport utility. Nothing found.
So I did the factory reset on the base station and scanned again and this time it 'found' it. Set up the network (passwords etc) from scratch and everthing working OK.
Except now it would not talk to the PC upstairs. Checked on the Airport utility to see what channel was in use and found it had defaulted to 13. No problem. I changed it to 6 (our normal channel) and waited for the base station to reboot. Base station re-booted fine (green light) and PC upstairs connected. Good.
BUT. Now could not find base station from iMac again!
So I went through the whole process again, once to make sure the fault was repeatable and once again to set a new channel to 10.
Now everything works great again. Everything talking to everything else (including iMac and upstairs PC) but using channel 10 now instead of the old channel 6.
I dont know why this fault should suddenly happen. Why a channel that has had no problems since install (months ago) should suddenly not work.
The only thing different was the big Software Security download from Apple yesterday morning. But the network was OK for hours after that and there was no Airport software upgrades today (that I know of) and the base station is still on version 7.1.1.
(One other strange thing I noticed. When running iStumbler after all this, I could see my network and the usual three other nearby networks near my home BUT they were all also now on channel 10 or 11 whereas they had all been on channel 6 previously just like mine had been. Weird.)
I am in the UK in case things are different where you are.
I would be interested to know if this has happened to you at some time especially in the last day or two.
Thanks

I don't know. I just reset the airport base station
(before your post) and erased all network stuff to
start from scratch.
Should it use PPoE?
That depends on your ISP. It would be in your ISP documentation.
Should AppleTalk be active?
TCP/IP and AFP (the replacement for AppleTalk) are required.

Utility can't find base station

I'm trying to change the security protection on my base station but when I open the Airport Utility, it just scans for a long time and says "can't find base station." The station works fine but the utility can't find it. What should I do?

I've had the same issue for several weeks also. Even reverting back to 7.1.1 I still have the problem. It's an issue for me, as the Airport Disk Utility doesn't recognize my USB disk.
While restarting Aiport Extreme temporarily solves the problem, everytime I shut down my Mac, Airport Utility doesn't recognize my disk when I start up my Mac. Have you found out anything yet?

Cant find base station after restarting... now what?

i just got the airport express today and and i have been trying to set it up for the past like 6 hours... at first nothing woudl work and i coudlnt get it to even start working however finally i was abl to get it to do the installation and get everything done however at the end when its ready updating everything a message pops up says " Airport Utility unable to find your base station after restarting.... blah blah blah" HOW DO I FIX THIS... please help .. thank you :]

The first basic troubleshooting procedure is to power cycle the entire network. If you have not already done this, now would be a good time.
Power off every device on the network in any order you want
Wait a few minutes
Start the 2Wire gateway first, and let it run for a full minute by itself
Start the AirPort Extreme next the same way
Keep starting devices one at a time a minute apart until everything is powered back up
Check the network
If you have already tried this a few times, please post back to let us know what other troubleshooting steps that you have performed, so we don't waste your time by asking you to do things that you have already done.

Blinking yellow - can't find base station - tried everything!!!

Last night I decided to change my network from WPA to WEP so that my nintendo DS could hook up through wifi (nintendo wifi website told me to change it to WEP to connect). Once I changed it, the base station rebooted. It came back with the evil blinking yellow light.
I open up airport utility and it cannot find a base station anywhere. "AirPort Utility was unable to find any AirPort base stations. Please make sure the AirPort base station you want to set up is plugged in and in range of your computer, and then rescan to try again."
- I unplugged the base station and plugged it back in. did this a billion times
- Rebooted my macbook. also did this a billion times
- Went through troubleshooting which kept telling me to just choose the base station to see what was wrong with it - HELLO...I can't choose the base station because it won't come up!
- Then I did a hard reset of the base station. Pressing in the reset button for the amount of time - but it says that it will start blinking green. But mine just started blinking yellow really fast. Then it reset. After starting back up - it went back to the slow blinking yellow. And my airport utility still can't find the base station.
- Then I tried the factory default reset. By unplugging it, pressing in the reset button and plugging it back in while keeping the button pressed and held it for a while. I still got not blinking green light that trouble shoot told me I would have.
I just got this thing about 2 months ago! Please someone help my computer find my base station!
Thanks!
Message was edited by: sharper43
Message was edited by: sharper43

hooking up the ethernet cord to the Airport and to the macbook did the trick. Then I unhooked it and it still detected it. I was excited.
It was time to configure it, so I tried to set it to WEP again so my Nintendo DS could connect. As soon as I configured it and the AirPort restarted, it was gone again.
I had to do a hard restart again and then I had to hook up the ethernet cord again. The whole process all over again, tried WEP again....still died.
So I did the whole process with hard restart and ethernet cord AGAIN. This time I configured to WPA2 and it connected on up to the internet with no probs. Yay!
But it still leaves me not being able to hook up my Nintendo DS. Is there no way of configuring my AirPort to WEP????
Or maybe this should be a new topic...
Message was edited by: sharper43

Can connect to internet, but software can't find base station

I bought the Airport express a few months ago to use with my stereo and IBM laptop. It took me a few tries to get it initially installed properly, but eventually did and everything worked great. A month or so ago I noticed that the tab to select "remote speakers" was not on my iTunes as it had been before. All of the settings were correct on my iTunes however so then I went to the AirPort Utility to check out the settings and the program said it could not find the base station. I tried to find the station on AirPort Set-up assistant. This program can find it but not connect to it (on the first page after the menu it shows the base station and when I hit "next" it can't connect to the station). All of this is really odd as I have internet access through this base throughout these problems. Any ideas what might be happening and how to fix it? I have reset the base station to factory settings numerous times, I have unplugged everything and restarted the whole process numerous times, I even left the base station unplugged for a week to let it relax. Still nothing works. I can connect to the internet through the station but can not find the station.
IBM T40 Windows XP Pro

Thanks for your help. I can manually connect to the internet but I can't figure out how to get iTunes to recognize that there are remote speakers as my computer can't recognize my base station. Is there a manual way to do this?
IBM T40 Windows XP Pro

Wireless working, but Airport Utility can't find base station

I am having issues with Apple TV and iTunes that led to me investigating my new Airport Extreme base station (AEBS) as possible cause.
Oddly, I'm right next to the AEBS now and the wireless is working sweetly as I type. However, when I use the Airport Utility to access the base station, it can't find it - I can 'rescan' for all the hours but with no luck.
Any ideas what's going on here?

I've just encountered this problem for the first time. On my brand new MacBook Air (Leopard factory installed), I opened Airport Utility, entered Manual Setup, and restarted my Airport Extreme from the Base Station menu. It restarted, but once it was back up the Airport Utility could no longer find it, even though I was connected to the internet (and the Network preferences pane showed connection and a green light).
I have a MacBook (vintage 2007) that's still on Tiger -- I've never had any problem using Airport Utility from there, so I imagine I can still configure the base station from there. But I hope this issue is on Apple's radar so there'll be a Airport Utility update that fixes it.

Can't find base station

I have a Motorola surboard modem with a linksys router. I am trying to add the airport extreme so that all of my kids macbooks can get wireless internet. Unfortunately, I am now lost with these ultra SIMPLE instructions. My Intel based IMac is hooked up to my Optimum Online DSL through the above mentioned gadgets. Do I still need the linksys router? I can not get the AE to get past the yellow blinking light (excuse me, AMBER, blinking light!). Besides the obvious, using the correct port, etc. I think I am just confused which components need to be used and which need to be terminated, what needs to go into the IMac itself and why it can't find the base station that is sitting on the same table???? I THANK YOU, MY CHILDREN THANK YOU & MY HUSBAND WHO WILL HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS INSANITY, ESPECIALLY THANKS YOU!!!!

JaimeP, Welcome to the discussion area!
Do I still need the linksys router?
No you don't. The AirPort Extreme base station (AEBS) can completely replace the Linksys.
The hardware connection should be an Ethernet cable from the Motorola modem to the WAN port on the AEBS.
Whenever you switch the Ethernet connection of a cable modem from one device to another you need to power off the cable modem. This causes the cable modem to forget the device it was talking to. When the cable modem is powered on, the cable modem will discover a new device to talk to.
Some cable modems have a backup battery which must be removed before the cable modem will completely reset.
Some times the information is stored at the ISP and not at the cable modem. Typically this requires leaving the cable modem powered off overnight (or at least several hours).

Airport Express can and can't find Base Station...

...I'll explain: When I am booted in the regular internal boot drive (OS X 10.5.5) my Express finds the Base Station just fine; but, I want to update a boot partition on an external drive which currently has 10.5.2, and when I boot up in THAT partition the Express can't find the Base Station. The only utility on that partition is "Airport Utility" and when I run it no Base Station shows up. Anyone ever experience this? Thanks for any suggestions.
Nick

Hello -- I solved my problem. While booted up in the OS that WOULD go online, I downloaded the "Airport Utility for Leopard" utility, then copied the installer onto the OS partition that WOULD NOT go online. Then I restarted in the boot partition # 2 (the one that wouldn't go online/ wasn't seeing my AirPort Base Station) and installed the newer utility. Then I ran the utility and, after a few clicks, THIS boot partition finally saw the Base Station and the AirPort Express, and therefore was able to get online. Thanks again for help.
Nick

Airport setup assist. can't find base station

I'll skip the "this is sooo frustrating" part. Oh.. too late. Anyway, here's my problem:
I have an imac g4, I just got an airport card from ebay that is recognized in the system profile so that seems to be working ok, and a new airport express base station. I'm just trying to play itunes thru my stereo downstairs but I can't get the setup assistant to find the base station. Even though it's plugged in three feet away from me. I've tried the hard reset, downloaded all the latest software and rebooted going on seven hours now and I still can't get the that **** amber light to stop blinking. I'm not a novice at this and I know it's all just trial and error but this one has gotten me flummoxed. That and I have a five month old so any help would be GREATLY appreciated.
imac g4 Mac OS X (10.4.9)
imac g4 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

For a first setup I find it easier to connect the express station via ethernet to the computer. In this case, the administration program will find it in any case and you can adjust the settings for either card and/or station. Removing the ethernet cable will then allow you to check your settings.
Dirk

Airport express-can't find base station

I've tried everything I can think of-I've reset my ae several times and still utility is not finding the base station-help!

I am having the exact same thing. I saw it once, and made some setting changes, now it's gone. I bought the bloody thing because although my modem has Upnp the mac claimed it wasn't working, so I though ok (back to my mac - only been trying to get it running for about a year: zero success) I'll get a base station, that supports NAT for BTMM, but the one time I did access the base station its error was double NAT, so the mac and the base station seem to be reporting two different things regarding the modem. It is driving me ballistic!!!!

Airport Utility can't find base station

I feel like I must be missing something very obvious. But my Airport Utility can't find any base stations, even though I am successfully connected to this network, the base station is about three feet away from the computer, and Internet Connect has no trouble finding it and specifiying the base station's id.
I have just done a wipe-and-install of my whole computer; I've reinstalled all software from CDs or installers, and this utility wanted to upgrade to version 5.2.1 (it says Disk Version 2.0 on the disk) before running, so I did that. And no base station detected, despite rebooting the computer, and rescanning any number of times. I'm using OS 10.4.6.
What can I do?
Message was edited by: Paul-ny

There is something puzzling that bothers me, even though I have things working again.
I first lost access to the AEBS when I tried to use Airport Utility to change the security setting of my network. It has been on the default WPA2 setting, and I was wanting to downgrade that to WEP because the long WPA password was too long to be accepted by my Palm TX Wifi software. But the shorter WEP password shouldn't have been a problem. At the time, after my system reinstall, the utility and the base station seemed to be working all right.
When I completed resetting the base station with WEP, though, there was an error message, after which I could no longer connect to the network with my laptop (using the old password or the new password), and then the utility lost sight of the base station as well. I had to do a hard reset and start over. When I did the same thing again, the same thing happened. When I reconfigured the base station with the WPA2 security, though, it all worked, and my laptop could get back online.
At this point I tried changing it again to WEP, and the same problem recurred. One last time with WPA2, and that's where I am now, except that I was pleased to find that my PDA, which had just been replaced under warranty, has some newer software in it and it now can accept my passkey (?)-- my airport code rather than the 64(?)-digit number version of it, so it's working, too.
But apparently Airport Utility has lost sight of the base station again. I don't need it for anything, but this is annoying. What's more curious, though, is what was happening when I chose WEP security.

AAU for graphite and snow can't find base station

I've always been able to find an answer on the discussion lists before, but I don't see where anyone has posted about quite this same problem:
I have a dual-ethernet (aka snow) airport that I'm using with a new model MacBook Pro. I'm using the Airport Admin Utility for Graphite and Snow (AAU for G&S) to manage the airport, and all had been working well until the past couple of days. I was having signal problems with the MacBook Pro but not with my old ibook G3. IStumbler showed more people in my apartment building were using the channel I had set so I thought I'd switch in case that was the problem. AAU for G&S on the MacBook Pro couldn't recognize the base station but the old AAU on the G3 ibook did so I changed my channel and the signal must have improved enough for the MacBook Pro since I was then able to connect to the Internet with the MacBook. But I still couldn't find the base station with the AAU for G&S.
I did a hard reset (or the equivalent) per support doc "Resetting the AirPort Base Station (Dual Ethernet)" and tried to reload the software per another support doc "AirPort Base Station (Dual Ethernet) : How to reload software from Mac OS X". When I hooked the MacBook Pro up to the airport by ethernet, I still couldn't find the airport in the AAU for G&S. And now after the reset, I can't see it anymore on the old utility on the G3 ibook.
While the MacBook Pro was hooked up to the airport by ethernet, I was able to connect to the Internet that way, and I'm wirelessly connected to the airport right now (which is hooked up to my cable modem). But if I need to change my channel again or do something else to the base station, I'm stuck--the AAU for G&S can't find it.
Is anyone else still trying to hold on to their Snow airport and either run into or solved this kind of problem? Very grateful for any assistance!

Thanks to everyone who read my question, but I seem to have found a solution to this which only goes to show if you mess around enough ... Anyway when my AAU for G&S couldn't find the base station by scanning, I had tried using the "Other" option and entering the IP address that I saw in the Network Preferences Advanced window. That didn't work, but this morning I notice that there was another IP address, slightly different for Router. Since my Airport Snow is functioning as my router to my cable modem, I tried that IP address and voila, I can bring up the settings on my base station and reconfigure them. I've done this several times successfully so far. Of course I now may have to get rid of the old Airport since the network interference in my apartment building is now getting ridiculous, and I'm hoping the the newer Airport Extreme will help me to find a wireless space that will work consistently without dropouts.

Unable to find base station

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