Airport Extreme Weirdness

[frannbug]

My 2nd generation Extreme began to behave strangely; my MacBook Pro Airport Utility image showed a different front light to the actual unit and I kept losing internet or disk connection. I worked out it was on the verge of packing up so I purchased a brand new 5th generation model from Apple.

I took all the connections out from the back of the old one, replaced the power supply with the new one and plugged it all back together again - instantly I was connected to the internet which was a bit of a surprise, not having entered any settings yet. Still I guess the internet settings are on the Billionaire Bipac Ethernet ADSL Modem rather than on the Extreme. So far, so good.

Next I opened the new version of the AirPort Utility. Eventually it saw my new unit. It tried to gather information about the new Extreme. Then a message came up. 'An unexpected error occurred. Try again.' How very helpful. An error. What a useful message, telling me exactly what has gone wrong and how to sort it. Not.

So I decided to open AirPort Utility 5.6. Well this really was a surprise! There I had two units, my old one (which I had just unplugged) resplendent with green light despite the fact that it had apparently been reporting problems; and the new one, waiting to be set up. I clicked 'continue' and waited. Then I got the message "An error occurred while reading the configuration. Make sure your Apple Wi-Fi base station is plugged in and in range of your computer or connected via Ethernet and try again. (-6753)" At about four feet away there shouldn't have been any problem and of course it was plugged in or there wouldn't have been any lights showing on the unit. I do hope I'm going to be able to tell the difference between the old and new Extremes after spending all that money on a new one!

So now that I've had similar problems with both my base stations I surmise that it must be some kind of corruption on my Mac. Has anyone any idea what I should delete and reinstall to get it working properly? I'd be so grateful for a bit of help here as at the moment I have an unprotected network that needs sewing up!

 

[frannbug]

Now I've used Ethernet and managed to get a network set up; but there was an error message at the end, although the network name appeared in the list. I disconnected Ethernet and found myself disconnected so tried to get onto WiFi. It wouldn't accept the password I'd just pasted in, even though I was pasting it again. I disconnected WiFi and reconnected it and my password was accepted. I can't put up with these kind of gymnastics for every member of my family when we want to go on-line - is there someone who can give me some advice here, please?

 

[jayhawk11]

Have you tried doing a factory reset? Take a paper clip and hold in the button the back until the LED rapidly flashes.

Sometimes all you need is to wipe the slate clean and try again.

Beyond that, what OS are you running? What hardware?

 

[frannbug]

Thanks for your help, jayhawker.

My setup:
A late 2006 MacBook Pro with 3GB RAM and 750GB hard drive, running Lion. Various other Macs around the house, plus an iPad, three iPods, two iPhones and a couple of other phones. Not quite made it to the cloud yet, still using MobileMe. New AEBS has a USB hub attached with four hard drives and an all-in-one printer; also an A3 printer attached to an Ethernet port. Modem is Billionaire Bipac non wifi.

With regard to a factory reset, I must say I was tempted to do this with the old 2nd generation model that I've just replaced, but was worried about losing all my settings and cutting the family off from the internet when it was needed for work; so as it was old I splashed out on the new model instead. The fact that the new one had exactly the same problems that the old one had had when it was fresh from the factory makes me think the problem is on my MacBook Pro rather than the AEBSs. The problems I mention in my first post were when it was running straight out of the factory with nothing changed. My AirPort Utility couldn't read its configuration file when it was first connected so I couldn't even get into it to start setting it up until I attached an ethernet lead; and even then I got an error message at the end of the process.

I have now managed to get my network secure and up and running, but it seems, just like with the old 2nd generation AEBS, to be running intermittently. I haven't yet managed to get back onto my four drives; but I found before that my access to them seemed to depend on time of day and how long I'd had them mounted. At times AirPort Utility would behave perfectly normally. At others I had this same problem with an inability to read the configuration file and my drives would be inaccessible. Sometimes it was solved by unplugging the AEBS for a while; sometimes I'd go to bed and find everything working again by the morning. Sometimes I got them back by disconnecting wi-fi and then reconnecting it. A different solution every day.

One thing's certain, I've got to get rid of these glitches or my hubbie is going to be asking me why I've spent all that money on a new unit that functions just as badly as the old one!

 

[jayhawk11]

Weird. With how many issues you're having (and the number of devices involved) I would just call AppleCare. They can walk you through a lot more troubleshooting options than what we would be able to do here on the forums.