Airport Express Mysteriously Disconnects and Requires a Restart

I wish that was the solution. Unfortunately, I've almost always used WEP with my setup and the problem of course persist.

Mine too are locking more frequently as time passes. I cannot deal with this tihs (reverse) forever.

72 hours and iʻm still up and running, under WEP 128; i hope it provides some measure of security. somewhere in another thread someone indicated WEP doesnʻt do squat. hopefully for now, WEP is good enough for my purposes.

it seems that the combination of factory resets (apparently, at least on the Expresses), and configuring a WEP 128 encrypted network under the latest updates of airport utilities seems to work for me; internet, airdisk, airtunes (on my PB G4/10.4.11 - i guess iBook G3/10.2.8 is just too old be anything but a file server and internet browser, network-wise).

anyway, thank you to everyone here. i wouldnʻt have gotten my system up and running without every post in here.

btw, does anyone from apple read these discussions? and if they do, do they ever acknowledge any problems and/or solutions (from apple or this community) to the community? it would be nice, seeing as we collectively fork out some major $$$, and i suspect, good PR for the folks there in Cupertino.

I have managed to get my airport express working again! See my post above for my spec and what I am using the station for.

I began by turning my wired router off and on with the airport express disconnected from the wall. I then performed a factory reset twice over (search support to find out how to do this if you do not know) and then set up the device without security. I tested this and it worked. I then put on WEP security and it continued to work and has done so for over 2 weeks now! From what I can remember, I have not used the airtunes or printer ability since I have reset it as I don't want the device to go down again. I believe airtunes might be where the problem lies from reading other people's posts. I didn't do any form of software reset/downgrade/upgrade to the station.

Anyway, give that a go and do let me know if it works as it would be nice if we have found a solution.

Hi Mouse212,
Pleased to hear that you have got WEP encryption working - it's a lot better than nothing!

I guess, compared to others, I've been lucky that WEP worked for me from the start.

It's WPA / WPA2 that doesn't work on my unit, and as far as I can see, not one person in this thread has WPA working!

I strongly suspect that the firmware on our units is faulty, and it is EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING that Apple have been absolutely silent on the issue.

Apple - is there anybody out there????

Just tacking myself on to the list here. My Airport will only connect for a few minutes before having to be manually reset. I'm a first-time Mac user and I am extremely disappointed with the way Apple has handled this obviously widespread problem.

Hi all. I had the same problem as described here for days and have managed to solve it for myself at least. This may help others so thought I'd post so that at least you can give it a go if you're at the end of your tether.

I have a Speedtouch router running WPA and an Airport Express which I use solely for streaming Airtunes to. The Express kept falling off the network and although displaying a steady green light it was not being picked up by Airport Utility 5.1 or iTunes 7.5. Many hard and factory resets later it is working for me and (touch wood) has not become unavailable in some 4 hours - a record since I did the last Software Update which seems to have caused the problem, for me at least.

The two main things I did was to roll back to the 6.2 version of the express firmware and changed the base station password to a 10 digit hexadecimal to match my routers password. Ever since all has been well.

To roll the firmware back I had to download the previous version 6.2 from within Airport Utility by holding down the option key while selecting 'Check for Updates' in the 'Airport Utility' dropdown menu. Then once I had it I did a factory reset on the express, then set it up to use it's own wireless network rather than join my existing one as this proved more stable in order to do the firmware update. You can update the firmware once you have it by clicking on 'Version' in the 'Summary' screen of Airport Utility. Once I had the firmware updated (or downgraded to be precise) I did another factory reset on the express and used Airport Utility to configure the express to join my existing wireless network and used the same 10 digit hexadecimal password that my router uses for it's WPA security for the express's Base Station password. Once the update had completed I rebooted the express and the connection has been steady since.

Like I said, this may help / solve it for some, it has for me at least for now! Good luck.

Hi Big Turkey,

Certainly WEP seems to be our only option but I dont think WPA is the source of our problem of the unit failing as mine failed and I only ever set it up with WEP and it failed all the same. I assume WPA not working is a separate issue.

If anyone tries this and it doesn't work, you're not the only one (I've tried downgrading, didn't work for me -- started failing again after a couple of days). I strongly hope it keeps working for you, richardls. Thanks for posting.

Does Apple ever speak up on these forums ?
Or do they just take note and (hopefully) quietly roll out a software/firmware update when the bug/topic has drawn such alot of interest/issues ?
I know theres another 'or'... but as a long-time loyal mac fan, I'm in denial that they will continue to ignore this.. however the ground is starting to give way beneath me.

SOLUTION?
I am not technically fluent but, my partial (temporary?) solution: After trying the multitude of solution attempts listed here, I manually changed my channel from 'auto' to '10'. It has worked for 3 days!
I have no idea why, nor do I know if it will last. I confess I use WEP 128, as I am chicken to switch to WPA and risk pressing my luck.
I certainly will not recommend an APX wireless network to my parents. (I was going to) They would disinherit me if they ran into this.

This is just awesome.

I was having all the problems people have been discussing. So I brought my laptop very close to the airport. My laptop finally recognized it. So I went in and changed the settings to WEP.

NOW IT WON'T STOP BLINKING AMBER.

This is pathetic.

Count Me in... Initial start up trouble then worked fine for about a month. NOW I have this Airport express just sitting there (with a solid green light- laughing at me) that can not be found in the airport utility... Im getting pretty ticked-

Not the Mac OS- Im using windows (gasp)~
Not the router- im using a netgear (gasp gasp)
Not the security- Im using WEP 128 (triple gasp)
Purchased unit in early november.

AGAIN!!!! HELLO APPLE ANYONE HOME!

Ive had better customer support experiences from dell! (they only took 3 months to solve my issue).

I have been having this same issue but only with my NEW airport express. I have two airport express units using WPA2 and the newest unit is having the problems in this thread, while the older one is working FLAWLESSLY.

I'm lead to believe it is hardware because i have a working unit using the same firmware and settings. At any rate, i'll be returning the defective unit and hopefully the replacement will perform like my older APX.

Same problem here. I purchased 2 AX's to add to my AEBS network to have the functionality of Airtunes. The stupid things would drop off every day. Green light stays on, but not recognized. Have to unplug and replug to get it to reset and play again. A pain in the butt. I thought it was just my network, but my parents set up the same thing, 2 AX's on an AEBS network just last week. Same problem. Not recognized in airport utility. Except, resetting theirs now the airport utility will not recognize anything. I have no idea what to do.