You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Airport time capsule 1st gen flashing orange light

Hi, recently my time capsule has been flashing an orange light. I searched it up and it says a bunch of things but I cant access it on airport utility. It isnt showing up at all. What has happened? Thanks

Servers/Datacom

Posted on Jun 27, 2020 9:25 PM

Reply
6 replies

Jun 27, 2020 9:34 PM in response to Camen248

It is a major miracle that a 1st Gen Time Capsule will even power on at all at this point. It should have died long ago.


As a last ditch effort, try a Hard Reset on the Time Capsule and see if you can set it up again. If you can, and you have data that you do not want to lose on the Time Capsule, copy that data over to another drive as soon as possible.


How to reset your AirPort base station - Apple Supportsupport.apple.com › en-us

Jun 27, 2020 10:02 PM in response to Camen248

You have to get the Time Capsule back up and running first.......to get at the data.


The reset will not affect any of the data on the Time Capsule......assuming the Time Capsule is still OK.


If you can't get the Time Capsule working again, you'll have to physically open up the Time Capsule to pull the hard drive out. Let's hope that the flashing light problem is not telling you that the hard drive has failed.

Jun 28, 2020 3:47 AM in response to Camen248

when I get a misbehaving apple router which will not play nice with the airport util then I take a computer and disable it's wifi if it has that, and connect it directly to the router by ethernet cable, then airport util always been able to find it so far, and airport util been able to give me a more meaningful error message than an unexpected error occured

Jun 28, 2020 7:08 AM in response to Camen248

Rather than trying to restore previous settings.....which may be faulty.......try setting up the Time Capsule with new settings for the Network Name, Base Station Name, and Password.


If the Time Capsule is working correctly, you will have a new wireless network, so you will need to choose the name of the network and then enter the password on devices that will be connecting to the network.

Airport time capsule 1st gen flashing orange light

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.