I have an Airport Express Base Station I bought used on eBay. When I plug it in it goes to the blinking amber light and no further. It does not show up in Airport Utility. Is the product defective or am I missing something?

OK, thanks for clarifying on that.

Power up the Express and leave it on for a minute or two, if it is not already on.

Hold in the reset button on the back of the Express for 7-8 seconds and release

Allow a full minute for the Express to restart to a slow blinking amber light status

Open AirPort Utility

The Express is not yet set up, so it won't show up in the main AirPort Utility window at this time

Click on the Other WiFi Devices button

Click on AirPort Express xxxxxx

When you click on AirPort Express xxxxxx, that will start up the AirPort Utility setup "wizard". The wizard will take a few seconds to analyze the network and then suggest the correct set up for the Express.

Follow the prompts. Once the Express is set up and working.....then.....it will appear when you open AirPort Utility.

AirPort Express Setup Guide

Might be worth a try to roll back the firmware on the Express to 7.6.9, since both 7.8 and 7.8.1 seemed to have more AirPlay issues. If you decide to do this........

Open AirPort Utility

Click on the AirPort Express

Hold down the option key while you click on the firmware version number.....and then.....a list of other firmware versions will appear

Select the one that you want

Let's start by having you tell us what model of AirPort Express that you have, since there were 4 of them, all different.

Does it have two Ethernet ports? If yes, you have model A1392.

Does it have only one Ethernet port? If yes, you have either model A1264, A1084 or A1088. Look on the side of the Express to find the model number. It's hard to see with gray lettering on a white background, so you may need good lighting and/or reading glasses to see the model number clearly. Post back with your results.

Once we know what model you have, we can probably locate the Setup Guide for the product and provide a link, which may help move things along.

Power off the entire network......all devices.......modem, router, AirPort Express(es), computers, phones, etc in any order that you want

Wait a minute

Start up the modem only and let it run for a minute or two by itself

Start up the next device connected to the modem and let it run for a full minute

Keep starting up devices one at a time about a minute apart until the entire network is back up

Try to update the firmware on the Express again

To test the Express to see if it is working correctly on the network, temporarily plug in a pair of stereo headphones into the audio port. If things are working that way, you know the Express is working OK and the issue may in the cable connecting the Express to your receiver.

So far, we are assuming that the Express is fully operational. If it won't take the update or there is no audio when you test using the headphones, the Express may be defective. Unfortunately, there is not much more that you can do other than try resetting and then setting up the Express again and restarting devices.

Open up AirPort Utility

Click on the Express

Click Edit in the smaller window that appears

Click the AirPlay tab

Make sure there is a check mark next to Enable AirPlay

Other than powering everything off and then starting back up one device at a time, there is not really anything else to do at this point that I can think of, since I cannot duplicate the error that you are reporting when I run some checks here on a couple of Expresses.

Can you temporarily connect the second Express to the first using an Ethernet cable connection as a test? If yes, remember that you will need to reconfigure the second Express again.

If you cannot connect using Ethernet, then as a test I would try swapping the two Expresses. In other words, the "new" Express becomes the "main" Express and your old "main" Express now becomes the remote Express.