New AirPort Extreme would NOT restart

Hi there everyone,

This is my first post - so i will introduce myself. If you wish to ignore this and head straight to the issues, just scroll down to ** Issue **.

My name is Steve, i am a software development engineer working in Bangkok, Thailand. I am a long time user of Macs and reader of this forum, although i have only just felt the need to post on here!

Thats enough of that i think - if you want more information about me i am happy to respond to anyone personally.

** Issue **

Yesterday I bough a new AirPort Extreme, with dual band Wi-Fi for my house. I purchased this from an iStudio store which if you have ever been to Thailand you will know is the premium reseller of Apple goods in the country. My purchase is after a couple of weeks of research and chosen instead of a TimeCapsule.

Airport Extreme model number: A1301
Firmware version: 7.4.2
AirPor Utility version: 5.4.2 (542.23)

This is my first AirPort Extreme Base Station so I read the manual before I started (unusual I know, but why not). I then began the seemingly simple setup procedure.

After setting up all the basic settings, I verified I hadn't done anything stupid and clicked continue, allowing the software to save the settings back to the APEBS itself and restart it. I waited... I waited some more... nothing happened. The APEBS never restarted. I tried to reset it using the reset button, but got no response from it. It had COMPLETELY locked up.

Having read the manual (see, I knew it would come in handy), I reset it holding the reset button for 5 seconds while power cycling the APEBS by unplugging and replugging the Power. This reset it back to its factory default and the amber light begun flashing again - however when i started up AirPort utility it claimed that the APEBS was running on downlevel firmware. 7.4.1 and I should upgrade to 7.4.2.

I didn't recall this message 1st time booting up, however in my excitement may have missed it - fair enough. I clicked update. After some time, I was told that the firmware update had failed. This happened repeatedly. I did another hardware reset as described above.

The APEBS booted again, this time with no firmware message - something is strange here. I went through the setup again with the same result of a locked up APEBS.

I hardware reset the APEBS again, ensuring that I didn't get the firmware mismatch error again (If i did, I hardware reset the APEBS again). This time using the AirPort Utility, instead of using the simple setup, I requested manual control of the Base Station.

Everything seemed to be working as you would expect, so I partially ruled out hardware fault. Next I forced the older firmware version down to the APEBS, making it 7.4.1. This worked and I was able to still view and make basic changes in the manual control. I then upgraded to 7.4.2. This again worked fine.

I then set about setting up the APEBS using all the manual settings, and eventually all settings were as I wanted them. I then clicked update and the APEBS restarted without any problems at all...

So to fix this I seemed to have to do a manual reload of the older firmware, then update to the newer one. Possibly a setup issue when first running the 7.4.2 firmware?

I would be interested to hear if anyone has had a similar problem with either an AirPort Extreme, Express or TimeCapsule. Some research shows me that people seem to sometimes have these problems with the Express.

Thanks for reading

Hi Steve:

Many years since I've been to Bangkok. Great city, great shopping.

You might want to do some reading in the Apple AE forum - lots of good info there and many interesting experiences like yours. Link

Regards.