Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Major problem with Airport Extreme 7.2.1 USB Drives

C

chiefillini

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 28, 2006
110
0
Chicago, IL.
THIS IS FOR MODEL MA0703LL/A

Problem: If for some reason your computer looses a connection with your airport extreme (maybe due to some type of interference, loose internet connection and airport cycles itself..) without either you shutting down your computer or dismounting the drive you will be unable to reconnect to the drive again. A variety of errors will occur when trying to reconnect with the main one being "password, username etc. are invalid"

There are 2 solutions that I am aware of to fix this problem once it occurs, one is temporary (works until the airport drops your wireless connection again) and the other one is the current permanent fix.

1- Temporary Fix- unplug the usb drive from the airport extreme and plug it into your Macbook/computer. This will cause the drive to mounted correctly. "Eject" the drive and dismount it. Than re-plug the drive back into the airport extreme. Wait a few seconds and than re-start your computer. The drive will again work and should show up. automatically

2-Permanent fix-Downgrade your firmware/version to 7.1.1. Do this from the manual setup screen in the airport utility. Click on the word "Version," This will cause a pop-up box to show. In the "download version" choose version 7.1.1 and wait for it to install. Once the install is complete and you are back to version 7.1.1, re-start your computer/macbook and the drive should appear automatically.

The bad part about all of this is that I spent 2 days - 3 hours on the phone with a so called applecare "specialist" and they could not figure this out. One person told me there was no way to downgrade a firmware version. All 3 people could not think "out of the box" and just wanted to help me with a random dropped internet connection. I really could care less about the random drop internet connection, the problem is that the new firmware version causes you to loose complete access to your drive. So good job to those of you the are smarter than most of the apple support team and figured this out on your own.

List if you too are having this problem and already downgraded to version 7.1.1.
 
chiefillini said:
Problem: If for some reason your computer looses a connection with your airport extreme (maybe due to some type of interference, loose internet connection and airport cycles itself..) without either you shutting down your computer or dismounting the drive you will be unable to reconnect to the drive again. A variety of errors will occur when trying to reconnect with the main one being "password, username etc. are invalid"

There are 2 solutions that I am aware of to fix this problem once it occurs, one is temporary (works until the airport drops your wireless connection again) and the other one is the current permanent fix.

1- Temporary Fix- unplug the usb drive from the airport extreme and plug it into your Macbook/computer. This will cause the drive to mounted correctly. "Eject" the drive and dismount it. Than re-plug the drive back into the airport extreme. Wait a few seconds and than re-start your computer. The drive will again work and should show up. automatically

2-Permanent fix-Downgrade your firmware/version to 7.1.1. Do this from the manual setup screen in the airport utility. Click on the word "Version," This will cause a pop-up box to show. In the "download version" choose version 7.1.1 and wait for it to install. Once the install is complete and you are back to version 7.1.1, re-start your computer/macbook and the drive should appear automatically.

The bad part about all of this is that I spent 2 days - 3 hours on the phone with a so called applecare "specialist" and they could not figure this out. One person told me there was no way to downgrade a firmware version. All 3 people could not think "out of the box" and just wanted to help me with a random dropped internet connection. I really could care less about the random drop internet connection, the problem is that the new firmware version causes you to loose complete access to your drive. So good job to those of you the are smarter than most of the apple support team and figured this out on your own.

List if you too are having this problem and already downgraded to version 7.1.1.
Click to expand...

That will unfortunately not work with the Gigabit AEBS, the lowest you can go there is 7.2 (which I have done, been working for 13 hours so far (knock on wood)). 7.2.1 is an extremely unstable version, and I hope Apple fixes this ASAP. There are several discussions in progress on Apples support forums, unfortunately the AEBS versions are often mixed up in the threads, so it gets kinda confusing. Many, but not all, report that the 7.1.1 downgrade works for both the internet connection problems, as well as drives.
 
I did not realize they had updated this product. Yes, you are correct, the problem that I am talking about is for model MA0703LL/A and NOT MB053LL/A

I do not have a MB053LL/A so I can't give any feedback on this one.
 
My fix works

I found a fix that works for me. This works only if you can roll back to the 7.1.1 version. Once you have that working and all is connecting fine then make a note of what channel the AEBS is connecting on. Now upgrade to the 7.2. You will find that it has changed the channel its connecting on. Reset the channel to the one you were on in 7.1.1. This should keep your signal stable. It has for me. It's been almost a week since I did this and its been keeping the airdisks mounted and my internet and WAN connection okay. I think the problem is the automatic channel connection it seems to change on random and this messes up the airdisks and of course your connection to the modem.
 
same prob

Thks for the above advice and tips on resetting the AEBS software. Have now reverted to version7.1.1 and at least my odd ball PC laptop now finds the nextwork. Both Macs seem a lot more stable and no system jams. However the USB hard drive still doesn't come up. So I'll need to invest another 4 hrs of troubleshooting this weekend. I suspect I might need to turn off NATS and DCHP on the dynalink modem as I had to fiddle with these system after installing 7.2 etal in order to make things work. Don't bother with the Mac help line....the poor blighters just don't have the answers. Because of the latest AEBS update I missed 4 hours of my weekend last Saturday. Rats.
 
MacBlackBook22 said:
I found a fix that works for me. This works only if you can roll back to the 7.1.1 version. Once you have that working and all is connecting fine then make a note of what channel the AEBS is connecting on. Now upgrade to the 7.2. You will find that it has changed the channel its connecting on. Reset the channel to the one you were on in 7.1.1. This should keep your signal stable. It has for me. It's been almost a week since I did this and its been keeping the airdisks mounted and my internet and WAN connection okay. I think the problem is the automatic channel connection it seems to change on random and this messes up the airdisks and of course your connection to the modem.
Click to expand...

Only problem is that I have mine set to 802.11n only at the 5GHz so it does not allow me to choose a channel, the only setting that I can use is automatic. I do notice though that with 7.1 its channel 36 and with 7.2 it was channel 37.
 
Airport Extreme 7.2.1

I discovered that PC laptop has no problem connecting to the USB drives under 7.2.1, only mac computers were denied access to the external drives.
 
jeeypan said:
I discovered that PC laptop has no problem connecting to the USB drives under 7.2.1, only mac computers were denied access to the external drives.
Click to expand...

Exactly, this is the problem it is a Mac only issue. I have contacted Apple regarding this about 2 days ago.

First let me explain the problem:
After the last firmware update to 7.2.1 I began to notice an issue where about every 24-48 hours I would receive an error message on my desktop stating that my external drive has disconnected. I thought nothing of it the first couple of times. But after several weeks of having to reboot the airport extreme (which is by the way the only way to fix the issue) to remount the volume of the external hard drive I became tired of doing this. I have read several other users are having similar issues with the firmware update also and if you look on wikipedia's website under airport extreme (802.11n section) there are several issues indicated there.
Note: I am able to access the Internet still and still connected to my airport extreme wirelessly.
Another Note: Does not disconnect for Windows computers wired or wirelessly.

Back to calling Apple:
When I called them two days ago here is what we did:
Reset my Keychain password (No idea why we did this) = Did not fix
Plugged Mac in with Ethernet cable to airport extreme = Did not fix
Tried another Mac that I had wireless = Did not fix
Turned on Guest access (read and write) = This fixed the issue but only temporarily because applying this setting caused the airport to reboot.

After waiting a day and a half it disconnected again, so I called Apple.
This is what we did:
He looked at the notes from the last tech and talked with a product specialist. They advised me to hard reset the airport extreme and see if it disconnects again. So I will be giving an update on this in a couple days.

Also I do want to note that I have no wireless security at all applied to the airport extreme, I do however have the airport in bridge mode and in a WDS distribution system with an Apple airport express. This did work fine until the last firmware update. Apple has advised me to leave the default settings on the airport for now
 
Same issues with mine. 7.1.1 is mostly stable but I had the same problems the OP described with 7.2.1. My external HD still needs to be powered on before the AEBS, but it stays connected
 
rcarricato said:
Exactly, this is the problem it is a Mac only issue. I have contacted Apple regarding this about 2 days ago.

First let me explain the problem:
After the last firmware update to 7.2.1 I began to notice an issue where about every 24-48 hours I would receive an error message on my desktop stating that my external drive has disconnected. I thought nothing of it the first couple of times. But after several weeks of having to reboot the airport extreme (which is by the way the only way to fix the issue) to remount the volume of the external hard drive I became tired of doing this. I have read several other users are having similar issues with the firmware update also and if you look on wikipedia's website under airport extreme (802.11n section) there are several issues indicated there.
Note: I am able to access the Internet still and still connected to my airport extreme wirelessly.
Another Note: Does not disconnect for Windows computers wired or wirelessly.

Back to calling Apple:
When I called them two days ago here is what we did:
Reset my Keychain password (No idea why we did this) = Did not fix
Plugged Mac in with Ethernet cable to airport extreme = Did not fix
Tried another Mac that I had wireless = Did not fix
Turned on Guest access (read and write) = This fixed the issue but only temporarily because applying this setting caused the airport to reboot.

After waiting a day and a half it disconnected again, so I called Apple.
This is what we did:
He looked at the notes from the last tech and talked with a product specialist. They advised me to hard reset the airport extreme and see if it disconnects again. So I will be giving an update on this in a couple days.

Also I do want to note that I have no wireless security at all applied to the airport extreme, I do however have the airport in bridge mode and in a WDS distribution system with an Apple airport express. This did work fine until the last firmware update. Apple has advised me to leave the default settings on the airport for now
Click to expand...

I've been through the hard reset route a couple of times as well. The only thing that has helped me was hard reset + downgrade to 7.2. Now I'm falling out every second day or so (compared to all the time).

I won't touch 7.2.1 with a barge pole.

C'mon Apple, this has taken far too long. The discussions in the aebs section of discussions.apple.com tell their own story.
 
rcarricato said:
Well after 48 hours once again my airport extreme dropped the connection, I'm in the process of calling Apple now
Click to expand...

My airport actually did not drop the connection and has been working fine since I performed a hard reset on it. I left off sharing it with windows workgroup also now too, that may be causing the issue. Just a thought....
 
Weird. I'm using 7.1.1 on my AEBS myself, but I'm not using airport disks.. I tried 7.2.1 and I had some other problems that seemed to affect the reliability of the router in general, things are fine on 7.1.1, though.
 
never had the problem until recently

I never had a problem until I connected a second drive. I had a drive plus a printer connected via a powered usb hub.

I'm trying the 7.1.1 fix now and will report back.
 
I just had this problem this morning. I didn't know what to do. I'm gonna try this when I get home. Didn't have time before school to do all of this. Thanks for the find, I was getting really mad.
 
reporting back

Its been 6 days since I reverted back to 7.1.1 and I have yet to have an issue. Thanks chiefillini! It seemed to do the trick.
 
So I have both the Gigabit and the Original version of the N router. My original version seems to only have the 7.2.1 version of the firmware. How did the original get erased? and Is it possible to obtain the 7.1.1 version
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back