Airport Express Mysteriously Disconnects and Requires a Restart

I have had a unique test and control experience, using an Extreme and two older Express units which have never failed to work flawlessly. During the Thanksgiving sale I ordered a third Express and had problems with it (scroll way up in this thread). Since all of us have had virtually identical experiences and since I was able to compare firmware and setup configs of the new and older Expresses, we can conclude that this is a hardware problem, possibly even one flaky component. We have all driven ourselves nuts with this problem, getting very creative in our approach to solving the it. I was even told by Apple at one point that the Express was working if the green light was on when it could not be seen by Airport Utility. This, as we have all discussed here, is utter nonsense. I feel we have exhausted all possibilities for user fixes.

This week I was at the big San Diego Apple Store at Fashion Valley. They have an entire display dedicated to routers but they did not have one Express. The entire rack was filled with Extreme units. I asked one of the sales guys if that meant that Apple had pulled the Expresses from stores and that they were addressing the problem. She gave me a big grin and said, "I am not allowed to comment on product releases or possible future product releases." The grin got bigger. That told me what I needed to know. Apple has pulled these from their stores in order to correct problems. The web store is offering them, showing ship time as 3-5 business days versus 24 hours for the Extreme.

I think they got the message, so if you have one of these which is flaky, return it and wait until they appear in stores again. Given the thousands Apple sells, I suspect this problem occurs with a minority of the units and all of us were the unlucky ones. I still want a third Express and will add one when they are returned to stock and we'll see if the problem has been corrected. The concept of the Express is very sound and I have two I just love. I look forward to their return to the product line, hopefully fixed and perhaps even enhanced.

If this is true, this is extremely promising news. I have had no problem with my older Express (>2yrs) and am on my second new Express in the last 6 months, both with the same problem. Hopefully, I won't have a problem exchanging for a hopefully new and improved version.

Huh. Doesn't show up -- can't find it under the recent entries. Do I sense someone selectively removing a review? It's three days ago now... or did you remove it yourself?

New airport express tomorrow supporting 802.11n. thats why the apple stores are out of them.

Well, that didn't happen.. at least not according to the online Apple Store.

I have visited two additional Apple stores since I wrote the above post and I have seen the same thing. The entire Airport area is filled with Airport Extreme boxes and not one Express or space where one might be. The product is still very much listed in the online store with 3-5 day shipment. This is a promising development and I am looking forward to seeing it back in stock so I can try a new one.

please don't tell me that the solution to this issue is for me to spend more money...

Thanks for the info, JLC-PV. I have posted a warning to the reviews section of the Express, purchase page, at the online Apple Store. Hopefully this may help anybody thinking of buying a new Express right now from suffering the same fate as all of us. And who knows, maybe if someone at Apple is paying attention to those posts, it might help to speed along the correction.

Wow, a couple days ago, as I noted in the above post, I posted a warning on the Apple Store Site (Express reviews) re: the problem we are all having here with the Express units. My goal was to save potential buyers or at least warn them about this problem. As of a few minutes ago, they never posted my remarks. (By the way, my remarks were totally professional and I didn't slam Apple at all). I'm normally not the paranoid type but this kinda smacks of a cover up. Considering that they (Apple) have not responded to this extremely long thread, haven't really given any of us any real help on the support line and now don't seem to want a post on their store site, this sounds like a little more than just having their head in the sand. I am a big fan of Apple but they certainly let me down on this one.

Just in case some folk get all excited about my disable upnp attempt: Of course, that blissful situation didn't last. I'll repeat: WPA doesn't work as advertised.

Just FYI, I'm posting a 4-star review to the store,

"Airtunes is GREAT! But warning: WPA support is buggy!

Great package, a really smart combination of wifi extender, wireless music with iTunes, USB printing. A really Apple-y product with nice packaging, more or less simple setup (extending networks is fundamentally messy, but airport utility makes it relatively easy), great looks!

A relevant feature-related warning: although Apple promises WPA network security support as a feature, the WPA is so fragile that it's useless in practice, dropping the connection at random moments. So far, Apple won't admit to it in public, leaving many customers in frustration. For more background, search for a thread on the forum called "Airport Express Mysteriously Disconnects and Requires a Restart". The good news is, if you're using no security or WEP, you should be fine."

Let's see if this makes it through Apple's "1984 filter" 😉

Please post a follow-up. I am dying to hear if this review gets published.

E

It's up under 'recent review'. Vote it up, so it gets seen!

Apple Website

I've got this working fine now (with WPA2, audio out, etc) - did have nightmare problems with it initially.

I had the exact same problem everyone else is reporting with the Airport Express dropping off the network - tried everything, every option and setting, various different firmwares, etc, for weeks and couldn't solve it - the Airport express simply disappeared after a while after inactivity.

Finally, I found simply having an active ethernet connection always connected to the Airport Express made it work absolutely fine (with WPA2, etc on). I have my Airport Express connected to my Airport Extreme wirelessly using WDS remote, with audio out to my amp. If I don't have anything connected to the ethernet port then it disappears after a short while (until I turn it off and back on again) however if I plug my windows media centre into the Airport express and use it also as a wirelessethernet bridge then it performs flawlessly and hasn't disconnected in 6 months...

Are you all using it as a wireless extender/audio only device? Hope that helps if anyone is in the same situation as me here is my original post last year about the same thing. http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=4596854#4596854 . I would reply to it to say how I solved it but it says the post is archived and won't allow any follow ups!)

I have the same problem too.
Airport Extreme (new, flat model) goes offline every five minutes for no reason.
Green light still on, power chord unplug/replug only solution.

I am so disappointed with Apple, that you haven't replied to this thread.
It was started six months ago! So many users with the same problem can't be wrong!
It truly is disrespectful to your customers.
Sorry to say, this is pushing me towards a status called "I USED to dig Apple"