airport express and network probs...

[janey]

I'm like really frustrated right now, so sorry if i sound a bit rambling and nonsensical.

Like...my airport express base station hates everything in the house. It hates the extreme BS, it hates the computers, it hates the linksys dont-know-model-name, refuses to be recognized by four different computers.

Apple, in all its lovely stupidness, only put ONE status light on the airport express base station. It can show you three different colours, green yellow and amber. Depending on what colour its at, and whether or not it's flashing or solid, it tells you what's up, as detailed on the apple website here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=108045

Now, my base station's been STUCK between flashing and solid amber. Like it can't decide if it should flash it or just let it be one nice solid light. It's been doing that ever since I got really ticked off (about how some DHCP thing screws up and assigns these weird IP addresses I dislike because I do have a whole bunch of ports mapped/forwarded to specific IP addresses for stuff) and decided to reset all three of the base stations.

When in Airport Admin Utility, everything seems to be going fine. Fix a few settings here, enable WDS there, set a network password there.
Upload the settings, save the settings, restart.

WHEEEE the fun all starts.
The Airport Express BS starts doing its little flickering amber light dance. Everything else works fine.
So I go okay, wtf, hard reset the base station and try again...still doesnt work.
Try using another computer to change the settings, still doesn't work.

Now, I'm at this point where I feel like shooting someone because its not working and I've spent around 2 hours poking things and asking people for help. Earlier today I had a printer spit out plastic bits at me, and now this?! AHHHHHHHHHH!!!! Out of all the base stations NOT to work, it has to be the one I need most. aahhhhhhhh.

Help. Please. You'll be helping a girl who will be forever grateful for your help

 

[varmit]

I'm like really frustrated right now, so sorry if i sound a bit rambling and nonsensical.

Like...my airport express base station hates everything in the house. It hates the extreme BS, it hates the computers, it hates the linksys dont-know-model-name, refuses to be recognized by four different computers.

Apple, in all its lovely stupidness, only put ONE status light on the airport express base station. It can show you three different colours, green yellow and amber. Depending on what colour its at, and whether or not it's flashing or solid, it tells you what's up, as detailed on the apple website here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=108045

Now, my base station's been STUCK between flashing and solid amber. Like it can't decide if it should flash it or just let it be one nice solid light. It's been doing that ever since I got really ticked off (about how some DHCP thing screws up and assigns these weird IP addresses I dislike because I do have a whole bunch of ports mapped/forwarded to specific IP addresses for stuff) and decided to reset all three of the base stations.

When in Airport Admin Utility, everything seems to be going fine. Fix a few settings here, enable WDS there, set a network password there.
Upload the settings, save the settings, restart.

WHEEEE the fun all starts.
The Airport Express BS starts doing its little flickering amber light dance. Everything else works fine.
So I go okay, wtf, hard reset the base station and try again...still doesnt work.
Try using another computer to change the settings, still doesn't work.

Now, I'm at this point where I feel like shooting someone because its not working and I've spent around 2 hours poking things and asking people for help. Earlier today I had a printer spit out plastic bits at me, and now this?! AHHHHHHHHHH!!!! Out of all the base stations NOT to work, it has to be the one I need most. aahhhhhhhh.

Help. Please. You'll be helping a girl who will be forever grateful for your help

Are you giving it enough time? When flashing the base station wirelessly, maybe even wired, it takes a little bit of time, at least for me it does. I would say about a minute or two for it to finish and come back to life. Make sure that the IP addresses that its giving out doesn't conflict with the regular base station. Also, how are you trying to set this up, as a repeater to your normal Airport base station. If you have multiple base stations, you might be conflicting badly between them for which one the Express is suppost to hook onto.

EDIT: If you are using it as a repeater, you have to use the same password as the base station if it too has WEP enabled.

 

[janey]

Are you giving it enough time? When flashing the base station wirelessly, maybe even wired, it takes a little bit of time, at least for me it does. I would say about a minute or two for it to finish and come back to life. Make sure that the IP addresses that its giving out doesn't conflict with the regular base station. Also, how are you trying to set this up, as a repeater to your normal Airport base station. If you have multiple base stations, you might be conflicting badly between them for which one the Express is suppost to hook onto.

EDIT: If you are using it as a repeater, you have to use the same password as the base station if it too has WEP enabled.

I left it plugged in all night long, and it's still swinging between flashing and solid amber.
I tried it without the linksys router plugged in, and it's still having a problem, and the linksys is using that sveasoft firmware thing, and working fine with my extreme base station.

I'm just trying to get it to work the way it was before, the extreme one as the main base station, the express as a WDS remote station. The linksys is just there for testing purposes.
Yeah. i thought that might be a problem...but the IP addresses don't conflict.

 

[varmit]

I would try plugging it in and use it as just a normal base station. See if you can get to the internet. That should help you know if you have a faulty unit, which is a good guess right now since by itself it doesn't stay a single color.

When trying to make it a repeater, which document are you useing to help you set this up? Do you use WEP, or Mac Address filtering, anything that could possibly keep the Airport Basestation from talking to the Express. I do mean anything, I had trouble once with a remote control for a TV once since it was using the same frequency as the base station.

 

[Westside guy]

While it will be annoying to redo all the port forwarding and address range stuff, I'd suggest doing another hard reset of the express and then going through the setup using the Airport Setup Assistant. I had run into a similar problem once, and was just sure I was setting all the parameters correctly on the extreme and the express using the Admin utility - but it just wasn't working. I finally broke down and tried the assistant, and of course it worked.

Then once you have a working configuration again, be sure to export your settings for both the extreme and the express. I've learned my lesson about that...

Edit: I'm sure you're on top of this already, but make sure the firmware is up to date on both Airport devices. It's nice to be able to use WPA.

 

[janey]

While it will be annoying to redo all the port forwarding and address range stuff, I'd suggest doing another hard reset of the express and then going through the setup using the Airport Setup Assistant. I had run into a similar problem once, and was just sure I was setting all the parameters correctly on the extreme and the express using the Admin utility - but it just wasn't working. I finally broke down and tried the assistant, and of course it worked.

Then once you have a working configuration again, be sure to export your settings for both the extreme and the express. I've learned my lesson about that...

Edit: I'm sure you're on top of this already, but make sure the firmware is up to date on both Airport devices. It's nice to be able to use WPA.

That's what saving them as base configs are always useful
the Airport Setup Assistant keeps telling me its not gonna happen, and the admin utility keeps crashing on me.
but yeah, the firmware's uptodate too.

as for wep/mac address filtering, et cetera...not really.

 

[Westside guy]

Crap. Only other thing I can think of - other than what varmit already suggested - is to connect to it via an ethernet cable and see if you can set it up that way (not that I expect it to work; this officially falls into the "grasping at straws" category).

I am assuming that the first thing you did after the problems started was to undo the DHCP changes it sounds like you'd made initially...

 

[igucl]

I'm thinking there must be an Express disease going around. I found mine in the same state you're describing yesterday. After a frustrating night of trying all the same things you've done, I gave up and let it rest awhile. Today it was in a better mood and, after doing another reset and setup, it just worked. I can't explain it. Maybe the fever left?