Latest Airport Extreme Firmware

[stevespa]

Wooo!!! Connecting to external drives no longer takes forever!!!!

No kidding. Connecting to my Drobo is instantaneous.

Also, I can now listen to songs in iTunes while downloading podcasts, or doing any other disk traffic (my iTunes library is stored on the Drobo). Previously, I couldn't use anything on the hard disk if I was trying to stream music or video from it. Video or audio would freeze and sputter until other disk traffic stopped. I had always blamed the Drobo, but it does not appear to be the case.

Update works awesome, and fixes a lot of nagging issues for me!

 

[ZooCrewMan]

Problem updating Time Capsule...

Is anyone else experiencing a problem updating their last generation Time Capsule? It asks me to update the firmware, I hit update, and the blue candy-cane bar just keeps spinning telling me it's "searching for latest firmware update."

 

[Henk Poley]

I'm back to to 7.4.1 on my 100Mbit 802.11n Airport Extreme. Time Machine couldn't find the attached disk most of the time when using 7.4.2. With the older 7.4.1 it seems to work again.

 

[vabaist]

7.4.2 seems to have a problem with external hard drives

I'm back on 7.4.1, too. Had the same problem as Henk Poley. Two external HDs connected to the AE via USB hub, one for Time Machine Backups, the other for media storage (movies, photos, etc.). With firmware 7.4.2 connection to the HDs is lost after 1 or 2 minutes. For me, while making a backup or watching a movie, the connection drops and finder is unable to reconnect to the external hard drives via AE again. At least, in my case, internet connection remains stable, only the drives are unmounted. This is reproducable and there is already a thread at the Apple forums: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2056371&tstart=0

At least, I'm not the only one.

 

[RockTheGlobe]

Count me among those who had to downgrade the firmware as well. I put 7.4.2 on my Time Capsule last night, and everything seemed to be going well until mid-afternoon today... my network name would show up in the Airport dropdown menu, but I'd have no connection to the Internet, and if I tried to turn Airport off and then on again to sign back into my network, it would constantly ask me for a password (which should've been saved in Keychain) and would tell me the connection was timing out. On the off occasion my network was back up (thanks to multiple TC and MacBook Pro reboots), it was molasses-slow and would eventually die.

The funny thing is that throughout all this drama, my fiancee's MacBook still had a solid connection to the Time Capsule and the network, despite the fact that my iPhone and TiVo couldn't connect.

Either way, just downgraded back to 7.3.2, and all is right with the world again.

 

[Dmac77]

This update totally screwed my AEBS up. It would drop the connection after ~45 minutes, and it would reappear 5 minutes later, but I wouldn't be able to access the internet. Then I wouldn't be able to find the AEBS in Airport Utility. It would fix itself 10 minutes later, but after another 45 minutes it would start again. I restored it about an hour ago, and I'm not having any issues now.

Don

 

[jecapaga]

I'm back on 7.4.1, too. Had the same problem as Henk Poley. Two external HDs connected to the AE via USB hub, one for Time Machine Backups, the other for media storage (movies, photos, etc.). With firmware 7.4.2 connection to the HDs is lost after 1 or 2 minutes. For me, while making a backup or watching a movie, the connection drops and finder is unable to reconnect to the external hard drives via AE again. At least, in my case, internet connection remains stable, only the drives are unmounted. This is reproducable and there is already a thread at the Apple forums: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2056371&tstart=0

At least, I'm not the only one.

Same here. After 7.4.2 I lost ability to connect/backup with Time Machine on external. Downgraded to 7.4.1 and I'm now backing up successfully.

 

[thecypher]

I am staying on 7.3.2

Last time I updated to 7.4.1 my backups via AE to an external drive consistently failed from my Macbook and from my iMac. Connections also dropped all the time literally every few minutes. It was a nightmare and the computers become completely unusable if you are on a VPN. Everytime the wifi connections drops, the VPN drops. Reverted back to 7.3.2 and all was happy again. I have always been a sucker for updates but this has taught me better. If it ain't broke don't fix it!

Not sure exactly what 7.4.2 offers me. Unless I am convinced it is not going to break things again I am sticking to 7.3.2.

 

[dubhe]

Hopefully this will fix my connection drop out issues. Let's see...

 

[DaveTheGrey]

Videoplayback via airdisk still stutters with 7.4.2 on my dualband AEBS
Is it possible to use 7.3.6 with the dualband one?
With 7.3.6 an the AEBS N (without dualband) I had never problems, unfortunately I replaced it with the Dualband AEBS....

 

[Mpalmieri1203]

I'm back on 7.4.1, too. Had the same problem as Henk Poley. Two external HDs connected to the AE via USB hub, one for Time Machine Backups, the other for media storage (movies, photos, etc.). With firmware 7.4.2 connection to the HDs is lost after 1 or 2 minutes. For me, while making a backup or watching a movie, the connection drops and finder is unable to reconnect to the external hard drives via AE again. At least, in my case, internet connection remains stable, only the drives are unmounted. This is reproducable and there is already a thread at the Apple forums: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2056371&tstart=0

At least, I'm not the only one.

I am having the same exact issue. How do I reverse to a previous firmware?

 

[dborja]

Update: I flashed my AEBS and AExpress last night. So far so good this morning...

Update: Sadly, I'm going back to 7.3.2. My AEBS-attached drives and the Internet are dropping randomly.

I don't know if this is related but my connection was super slow yesterday morning; I didn't have time to troubleshoot whether it was the AEBS and AExp, the gateway router or my ISP...

 

[dubhe]

Hopefully this will fix my connection drop out issues. Let's see...

Better (less drop outs) but still some. Air Tunes still jumps a lot too, especially when Time Machine doing it's thing with the Time Capsule. These things should be designed to work together...

 

[jicon]

Just a little more fuel to add to the fire...

I've had the 100Mb n version for a long time now, and no issue with an external drive connected via USB... until 7.4.2, and oddly, not till this weekend, where I've updated my AppleTV and Boxee -which points to the drive for files.

It means rebooting the AE, and works fine for a few hours, then suddenly, connection dropped to the AirDisk or SMB share. None of my three macs can see the drive until I reboot it.

 

[iriejedi]

Glad to know I'm not alone - tried lots of things still nothing - at least 7.4.1 works just fin e for me... and 7.4.2 seems to have issues... so I'm not too worried about being one update behind the Joneses....

Is anyone else experiencing a problem updating their last generation Time Capsule? It asks me to update the firmware, I hit update, and the blue candy-cane bar just keeps spinning telling me it's "searching for latest firmware update."

 

[dave12345]

my network drive is loosing connection randomly after this update - its super fast to get onto it now with the new firmware - will try it out for a few more days but might have to roll back to the previous version if the drop outs continue - its annoying having to restart the router to get my drive back online!

 

[SeaneyC]

Updates working great here, before, my extreme would drop out all the time when downloading large files, the signal was fine, but the routing would just die randomly. With the new software on my Express too extending my Extreme it seems way more reliable than before and my time machine backups onto USB discs seem unaffected! All good

 

[dborja]

Updates working great here, before, my extreme would drop out all the time when downloading large files, the signal was fine, but the routing would just die randomly. With the new software on my Express too extending my Extreme it seems way more reliable than before and my time machine backups onto USB discs seem unaffected! All good

Congrats! "YMMV" definitely applies to this update...

 

[dave12345]

rolled back to 7.4.1 - my external drive kept dropping using the latest version - i wish i could roll back my SMC firmware - my MBP is burning up!

 

[shaunb83]

I finally rolled back to 7.3.2 - both the latest firmware upgrades have sucked. My girlfriends macbook (mid-2007 model) continually dropped the wireless connection, and my Macbook pro (late 2007) didn't do much better. Downgraded to 7.3.2 and have had no problems. Curious thing is that on all three systems, my iphone (2g running 3.0) has had absolutely no problems on any of the three firmware (7.3.2, 7.4.1, 7.4.2).

I have to say it is pretty frustrating....I guess the message here if it ain't broke, don't bother upgrading it!!

 

[dwdenbo]

Had to roll back to 7.4.1

Upgraded my Airport Extreme Firmware to 7.4.2 and it kept dropping the disk. Time Machine would fail and the shared disk I used was only available immediately after restarting the router.

Couldn't find anyway to report this to Apple from there website. Apparently, they don't want feedback about system failures.

 

[Henk Poley]

@dwdenbo, first.. what worked for me is after installing 7.4.2 you export the settings and then reimport them. After that the airdisk worked again without disconnects.

Second, you can report bugs to Apple at https://bugreport.apple.com/ for which you need a developer account (free registration, like Apple ID). Or you could give 'feedback' at http://www.apple.com/feedback/

 

[gr8tfly]

@dwdenbo, first.. what worked for me is after installing 7.4.2 you export the settings and then reimport them. After that the airdisk worked again without disconnects....

Didn't work for me. Total hang when two machine are trying to access AirDisks. Oh well - back to 7.4.1. My main reason for using 7.4.2, right now, is Wake On Demand. Thanks for the tip, anyway.

 

[bibi94]

looking for firmware 7.3.2

After upgrading to firmware 7.4.2 from 7.3.2 my Airport Express went bad.

I believed there was something wrong with my Apple softwares, so I uninstalled all airport express, itunes, ... from the PC and reinstall all.

Now I am sure it is because of the firmware, but when I try to upload older firmware, there are no more on my PC and I deeply checked on the Net but find nowhere where I can find a 7.3.2 firmware file.

If someone has it on his PC, please send it to me (can be done through MP or email to mymail94@gmail.com)

Thank you in advance.
Bernard