I installed it and now I am having trouble accessing it in configurations.
Anyone else having troubles? It is working as a router but not a wireless.
😟
Mac Pro, MacBookPro, imac, iphone,
Mac OS X (10.5.6)
I too experienced grief after installing Apple's "AirPort Base Station Firmware Update 7.4.1".
My home network consists of the Apple Airport Extreme Base Station (AEBS), a DELL desktop PC (running Windows/XP), my Apple laptop (MacBookPro 15"), and my iPodTouch. The DELL PC is connected via a Ethernet cable into the AEBS. The laptop and iPod connect via wireless with the AEBS.
The DELL PC and Apple laptop were up and running. I installed the firmware update from the DELL PC. It was successful. I worked on both the PC and laptop without any problems. I shutdown both.
The troubles began the next day when I re-booted the PC and laptop. Surprisingly, the PC connected into the network. However, the laptop did not. Repeated "soft" resets of the AEBS failed to resolve the problem. The PC (Airport Utility) software could still talk to the AEBS and reliably displayed it. However, the Apple laptop (Airport Utility) software could not talk to the AEBS (wirelessly). The laptop's Airport (wireless) card appeared to connect into the wireless network but no networking functions worked. The Airport Utility software on the Apple laptop would try but fail to find any AEBS. Sporadically (very infrequently) this software would find it and display its icon but within seconds the it would vanish again.
Another curious symptom was that I noticed the hardcoded IP address for my laptop somehow got changed to a non-sense IP address (I hardcode it and don't rely on DHCP). Another curious symptom was that I noticed that the hardcoded DNS server's IP address was GONE.
After 2+ hours trying to get the new firmware's AEBS to work, I gave up and reverted back to the prior firmware (thank goodness the PC was still talking to the AEBS). After reverting to this earlier firmware, EVERYTHING immediately started working again as far as networking functions.
Does Apple really test this "crap" before they release it?
Help
Not sure what to do next. Downloaded the Firmware last night. Crashed my AEBS. Have been working on it for 2 nights now. The bloody thing will not even recognize my AEBS. Have followed several suggestions from this post, but nothing seems to work. Any additional thoughts
My light stays green does not even want to reset it seems. Is it possible for download to have fried the AEBS? Let me know of any suggestion. Thanks
Can anyone tell me how to go back to the previous firmware version? I connected thru my Ethernet and downloaded the firmware but I don't know how to install it. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks
hey Ben!
ta for posting those firmware downgrade instructions, i was having a fit with all the dogs cobblers with the new FW update...someone did naughty things to the pooch...!!
My network connections were visibly slower after upgrading to 7.4.1 and often my computer would just get dropped; accessing my AirPort Disk was intermittent at best.
I have never downgraded before but I did so this time and everything was immediately better. Ahhh.
The update broke my wireless network. It lost all configuration information. I reconfigured and could no longer access the internet and couldn't access TimeMachine. Downgraded to 7.3.2 and everything works fine.
My Airport Extreme is connected to a SpeedTouch ST546 using bridge mode NAT.
I've had the same mix of the disastrous problems described in this thread. The 7.4.1 upgrade completely bricked my AEBS. This firmware version is junk. (just read all the posts, and no it doesn't matter if
some people didn't have a problem) Apple needs to fix these problems, create a new version of firmware, that has been
throughly tested, (plenty of bugs to test in this thread) and re-released it. I wasted 4 hours getting my AEBS working again. Eventually, I had to do a hardware reset, configure and revert back to the 7.3.2 firmware. Now everything is working great, just like it was
right before I got that popup telling me to upgrade. This is really unusual for Apple. Most all of their software and upgrades are rock solid. I've really come to depend on it. It's not like the nonsense I put up with at work, where I need to run Windows.
Some questions:
1. Does Apple support read these forums?
2. If so, when will there be new firmware that will work.
3. If not, how do I turn off the constant popup telling me to upgrade.
(it's not part of the regular software upgrade utility)
My Airport Extreme (first generation N, not the newest one) had slowed down considerably over wireless since the update to 7.4.1. It was almost totally unusable over wireless (Mac and iPhone). Ethernet seemed fine though. I rolled back to firmware 7.3.2 and that has been a 100% fix - it's super fast again. I have a USB disk attached and Apple TV over ethernet too. Both of those seemed OK on 7.4.1. I also had Mobile Me disk sharing enabled on 7.4.1 and that was working great. Lost that, of course, when I went back to 7.3.2.
Thanks for posting this. It fixed my AEBS that was bricked by 7.4.1. I kept getting a configuration error and couldn't do anything. I reverted to 7.3.2 as you said and everything is working.
I want to post that I am disappointed at quality control at Apple now-a-days. I realize that it's impossible to test patches for all possible configurations. However, more vanilla than my set up is impossible. I'm 100% Macs and have only two laptops connected to the base station. Come on, Apple! You've got to do better than this...
Downgrading to previous version(s) of firmware might work, but it's not necessary; at least not in my experience.
I have a 24-inch iMac connected to the AirPort (land line), with 2 Win XP laptops, a Win XP desktop and a couple of printers working wirelessly. After downloading a lower version of firmware, I couldn't get to Manual Setup function within AirPort Untility, since I kept getting that error message (-5) every time I tried that. After all the back-and-forth between down- and re-upgrades, I finally did a Restore Default Settings from the pull-down menu (without the physical reset). Then I went through all the steps of the initial setup process, which was last done almost 2 years ago, and all of the sudden everything worked just fine like before.
