MBP can't find airport extreme but internet works

Something similar occasionally ahppens to me.

When my Mac won't find my network, I go to the Wi-Fi icon in the menu bar at the top of the screen. I select "Turn Airport Off" then wait one or two seconds before turning it right back on. It works for me every time.

try that, and see if it does the trick. Good luck!

or, you can take the power off the Airport Extreme for 10 seconds and let it start again.

Are you close enough to the AE?

You are right, irritating behaviour of the wifi. Are you sure that the signal is strong enough? Option click the Airport icon in the menu bar or use an app that measures that (airradar and the like).

I bought an Airport Extreme yesterday and hooked it up today. Everything went great, but eventually all my wireless devices lost their connections. I've read several other forums where this has been observed as far back as 2009. Most attribute it to a firmware update, but that certainly isn't my case. My wireless devices include a Samsung TV, a Sony 'Google TV' internet box, and two Macs just to name a few of what I connected today. And they eventually lost their connection. Wired connections don't seem to be affected.

It appears that Airport Extreme's wireless feature is going into a sleep mode that is hard for it to wake up from, or it's overheating (it gets very hot). And this has nothing to do with signal strength, range, or interference. It could be a combination of settings as a 2010 post stated that Apple told him to do a hard reset and ensure "Allow Setup over WAN..." and "Allow SNMP" are both unchecked. Neither are checked on mine, so I guessing that might have been a lucky workaround back then. It's a pain to restart AE and re-enter the password on any device just because AE might have been idle for a period. After more than 2 years of this behavior, I'm surprised it continues to this day with no fix or clear explanation. Maybe there's a solution out there somewhere.....

Anyone has found a real solution to this problem? I keep having this problem of not accessing the Airport Extreme (Airport Utility does not find it and can't make backups), even though I'm connected to Internet through it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I just made the move from Windows to Mac by buying the new Macbook Air with Lion and an Airport Extreme. Experience with AE has been extremely frustrating.

I also have the same issue... I have a normal working internet, but I cannot seem to find the AE... so I cannot print... resetting the AE (waiting for 10 secs) works but it's not a solution for me...

Hi, back again. When you open Network / Airport / Advanced put the connection you want to the top and any other name from the same Wifi to the bottom, save.

In the Airport Extreme you have 2 frequencies at the same time, 5 and 2.4 GHz. 5 is the best but has a lower signal strenghth. Make sure that you have the one you want on top the other one at the bottom. First you have to give them a different name (with Airport Utility, manual setup) to be able to see them both as different names.

It's not a matter of connecting to the right WiFi network. My WIFI is at the top of my list.

Internet is connected to my Airport Extreme's network.

The problem is that Finder doesn't connect to the Airport Extreme.

In Finder I see "My Airport Extreme / Not Connected / [Connect As...]". When I click "Connect As" nothing happens for a while then I get an alert dialog saying "There was a problem connecting to the server 'My Airport Extreme' / Check the server name or IP address, and then try again. If you continue to have problems, contact your system administrator".

This happens with several WIFI-connected Apple machines on my home network (one 2014 MBP, one 2015 MBP and one 2011 iMac).