ok, have spent all night trying to set up my airport express right now and i am almost at teh point where i want to through it across the room
Installed the airport utility program. am trying to join an existing wireless network. every time i have tried setting it up. 1 of 2 things has happened.
it goes through it once, but then when it restarts the unit, it won't turn ack on right and errors not saving anything. with this I usually have my connection to my wireless killed, something won't let me connect automatically to my wireless network.
or it just can't detect the unit or connect initially to it
some things that might be useful to know
PC
wireless is a 2wire gateway, this is located maybe 20 feet away
have not once gotten the green light. just the flashing amber. i switched plugs hoping that would help, but no
help
Posts
I tried siabeling DHCP but couldn't do it without having to enter Ip addresses and stuff, is that the ip address i get via connecting to my network?
i am pretty sure its via WEP. its a 10 digit number i use off my router
i am also fairly computer illiterate so use small words
no idea on MAC, or what APE is
I'm sorry to inform you that that is going to be a pain in the ass. You need to *throughly* research this on Google. You need to use WDS, but I'm afraid that it's a fragile technology that is very likely not to work across different networking brands, or maybe even supported at all.
It is not the Airport Express's fault, just network manufacturers in general.
according to all the things on apple, it is not with WDS that i need.
everything seems to be connection issues
From Apple
So basically your APE is not getting an IP from your 2wire Router for some reason, either because of settings or security.
Could you try doing it with WEP off just to start with?
Do you have an Access Control List in use? (This is a list in the 2wire router that tells the router what can or can't access the wireless on it, also known as a MAC filter).
I don't know much about 2wire routers but I do have a Airport Express, and I love it. I can try and help but I don't want to mess with my own settings to much, I have it setup to do a ton of stuff, and if I screw it up it will take me ages to remember what goes where :P
Steps I would take:
1) Reset to factory defaults (its easy to mess something up, forget what you did and it will never connect)
Reset is under the audio port, you will need a paper clip or a old biro.
2) Make sure you have the latest firmware (6.3 I think).
3) Connect the APE to your computer by cable, and set it up from there. Don't try and set it up over the wireless, its hard work!
4) Connect to the APE with the utility, manual setup, take the utility slowly, step by step.
5) Give the APE a name you will recognize and a password under Airport/Basestation
6) Under Airport/Wireless set "Wireless Mode" to "Join Wireless Network" Input your Wireless Networks name in the next box, and set security (preferably to none at this point!).
7) Go to the "Internet" tab, "configure IPv4" should be set to "use DHCP" copy the DNS servers from your 2wire, and put the IP Address of your 2wire into "DHCP Client ID" the rest should get pulled from your 2wire automatically when it reboots.
8) Update your settings and reboot. When the reboot finishes (takes a good 2mins at least) you should have a green light on the APE, meaning its connected to your wireless network, it will receive an IP Address from your 2wire and you may need to find this, or restart the airport utility before it will find your APE again.
Once we get you this far, we can start putting security back in place and setting up the printer and Airtunes.
I have to go out now but I will try and help again later if you need it
Best of luck!
(EDIT: Is the 2wire your wireless gateway (with a modem/router before it in a separate box) or your router (connects to the internet) I did this presuming it was your router).
went through all your instructions, got to step 8 and when i hit update, the APE reset but it also kept resetting my wireless network, eventually preventing the wireless from starting up
even after the APE restarted, I can't find it. but now as long as the APE is plugged in, my wireless router keeps cycling through turning on and searching for a dsl signal eventually it gives up. so i don't know if the APE setup worked and its preventing the wireless from activating it
i got the DNS (primary and secondary off the router log in page. i didn't put in a domain name since i wasn't sure of what it would be, could that be the problem?
i had taken off security on the router
still no dice. whenever i plug in the APE it restarts my wireless adapter
Connection Type: PPPoE
Username:
Internet Address:
Subnet Mask:
Default Gateway:
Primary Domain Name Server:
Secondary Domain Name Server:
Domain:
there was nothing next to the domain thing. internet address went into the DHCP client id. i put the primary and secondary Domain name server numbers into the two places for it
did i screw something up?
You need to say what hardware you have (networking and computers) and how you are expecting them to interoperate. It still sounds like you're trying to make the Airport Express connect to a wireless network that you already have.
i am trying to get it to join my current wireless network. ya know like i said in the first post
my wireless router is plugged directly into the DSL...this is a 2wire something or another, don't know the exact model offhand as i am at work.
the APE won't join my network despite following instructions.
gingus actually has an airport express and seems to know the hell i am in regards to setup.
this seems to be a very common problem. but no one really knows what they did to fix it.
i have an intel wireless card receiving at 802.11g/b
its win xp
Being snide is a really great way to get people to help. And yes, I also have an Airport Express, but I'm not in the mood to help you now.
Hopefully ging will.
It is a little confusing to be fair, and to be honest, I have no idea why the APE would knock out your router and not allow you to connect to either, especially as its not in WDS or repeater mode!
I've made some amendments to your quote above that might possibly help.
Your not using any sort of "super G" fast mode on the 2wire are you? just the standard 802.11g mode.
Are you still connected to the Airport by cable when you try and reconnect to your network after rebooting the APE? You might want to pull the cable out while its rebooting, incase your computer is trying to use the APE as a wireless ethernet adapter. Might also pay to either reboot your computer or refresh your IP address as well, while the APE is down. (click start/run, type "CMD" then in the DOS prompt type "ipconfig /release" then "ipconfig /renew" to refresh your Ip on XP, if my memory serves, Im not on a windows box right now).
What wireless channel are you using?
I am reading up on some 2wire stuff now so I might amend this post shorty.
Edit: Model number of your 2wire might help at this point.
Private Network
Router Address: 192.168.1.***
Subnet Mask:
DHCP Range: 192.168.1.** - 192.168.1.***
Allocated: 8
Available: 182
its a 2wire 2700HG-B gateway. its on wireless channel 10
i have no idea why it was kicking me off of my wireless. i think i was still connected to the APE at the time. i am thinkiin maybe it wouldn't hurt to switch the cable to the router. according to my gateway i am at 802.11b with a DTIM of 1, power 10. i can switch it to 802.11g or b/g
i didn't mess with it tongiht as i am not feeling super hot and was in surgery all morning/afternoon
Can't hurt to switch to b/g mode, if the card in your pc supports it you should see an improvement at the very least.
"Private Network
Router Address: 192.168.1.***" That number is what should go in the APE under "DHCP Client ID"
The APE should then get an IP allocated to it from the 2wires "DHCP Range" that you posted up there.
Can't see any problems using channel 10, should be fine.
Defiantly pull the ethernet cable out of the APE when its rebooting, once that light goes green on the APE we can troubleshoot elsewhere.
i will give it a shot tonight. crossing my fingers with this latest support
success. i think the router IP address did the trick. Also pulled the wire during setup. I was able to play via airtunes and managed to set up a printer to it and actually print a test page.
things i didn't do
i didn't change my security its still on WEP. think i should switch it to something like WPA-psk? would it be a huge pain to set that up?
didn't switch to 802.11b/g. if i switch that will it need to reconfigue the airport?
thanks so much gingus. i would buy ya a beer or two if we were local
question.
if i plug a usb hub on there, i can presumably add more than one usb device, would anything change in terms of setup with the port ala printer setup?
Awesome, glad to hear thats sorted Happy to help m8, and happy ure the one doin the surgery and not under going it
You should be able to switch to b/g with no changes to the Airport, if you do anything more than download from the internet over wireless, you would notice a speed increase, also if you notice your Airtunes having some buffering issues (pauses during play back) I would try b/g.
WPA shouldn't be to hard to change to, in theory its just change the mode and the passkey in the router, and copy those changes to the APE, WPA would be more secure, but unless you have some highly sensitive data going through your network I wouldn't say it was a "must have" WEP is usually enough to keep the neighbors out, and enough to make a war chalker move on to some other poor shmuck who has no security
Worth noting for the future, in WDS mode WPA is generally not supported from my experience, with my own APE that was the stumbling point for me (I have mine as a WDS extender, Airtunes and have my 360 connected to the Ethernet Port).
Enjoy wireless music!
2. Make sure you never enable/disable the DHCP (distribute addresses) function on the Airport. If you have two devices on the same network distributing addresses things can and will blow up. I think you've got this disabled now but keep it in mind in the future.
3. If you're on Windows make sure you install Bonjour for Windows that came in the APE box. You can get the latest version off of Apple's website. This will let you connect to a printer shared over the APE.
if i go through the utility it knocks me briefly off of my wireless , but i reconnect quickly. i can deal with that
i actually set up my printer through this link i found via adding a TCP/ip port creation. worked quite well without doing the bonjour. i have bonjour installed but i didn't do anything with it