I was trying to check out my airport settings today when i ran into a problem. When i launched the AirPort Admin Utility, it listed my AP Extreme base station. However, when i clicked "configure'"and entered the password, an error message popped up informing me "an error occurred while reading the configuration." I tried powering down the unit and starting it back up, but i was still unable to log in. Interestingly, this quirk didn't seem to effect my internet connectivity.
I was beginning to wonder if my box had been hacked and someone changed the password. I followed the directions to perform a hard reset on the airport base unit. That would reset all of its settings including the master password back to the default of "public." So i got a paper clip, held down the tiny reset button for six-seconds and then waited about a minute until everything was up again. The unit again appeared in the admin utility, now with the factory default name, but i still couldn't connect. The "public" password did nothing.
Now i tossed the problem. into Google. Other people had experienced something similar and we able to configure the unit my connecting it directly to the mac rather than trying to administer it wirelessly. I gave that a shot. I unplugged the power cord on the base station and unhooked the network cable form the cable modem. I plugged the network cord into the ethernet port on my G4 tower and reconnected the power. After a second or two, it showed up in the AirPort Admin utility and i was able to get right in.
I'm not sure why it happened, but i'm pretty sure the reset wasn't necessary. My firmware is up to date as much as it can be for those of us not running Panther (base station: v5.1.1, admin utility: v3.1.1, OS: 10.2.8). Maybe it's because i have a regular airport card rather than an airport extreme card?
Posted by Matthew at June 27, 2004 10:00 PMMake sure your internet connection is into the WAN ethernet port not the LAN ethernet port. I had this setup wrong and once corrected could bring the admin screen up each time.
Posted by: SM at July 23, 2004 08:05 PMSM, thanks for the useful advice. In fact, did have my internet connection plugged into the wrong port on my base station. I witched it, restarted the modem, the base station, and my computer, and everything seems to be fine. How silly of me to confuse the circle-of-dots and the angle-bracketed-ellipsis; I should have known better.
Posted by: MrFlick at July 23, 2004 09:37 PM