I got a new 17" 1GHz iMac Thursday, along with an Airport Extreme card. I have an older Airport (Graphite) base station which has worked flawlessly with the other 2 Macs in my house. Nothing about the Airport worked like I expected with the new iMac though, no matter what I tried, I got an error when trying to join my Airport network. It would not accept my password, and when I set my base station to no longer require a password, I still got an error.
I eventually wound up calling Apple tech support. After an hour on the phone with them, the problem was still unresolved and was going to be handed off to the engineering group.
Friday morning I read this report on Macintouch and tried it first thing when I got home from work. Switching the Graphite base station to channel 11 fixed it. Now my new iMac with the Airport Extreme card connects like a charm to my Airport network.
Here is the original post from Macintouch:
Just got a new 17" 1GHz iMac. Installed the Airport extreme card and expected it to recognize and join my home network. This did not happen. Instead, I got "an error occurred when joining the airport network."
The network was listed in the Airport menu, but could the iMac would not join. After checking the usual suspects (spelling of the closed network name, MAC address included in the Airport Base Station listing), it turns out the problem was the ABS was set to a non-default channel (default is channel 11, the ABS was set to channel 2).
I switched the ABS to channel 11, restarted it and, viola, the iMac joined the network.
Just an FYI since Apple themselves apparently do not yet know the solution to this problem. I have no idea if this is specific to the new iMac, or the Graphite base station, or if it would also apply to the new Powerbooks with Airport Extreme when trying to use a non-Extreme base station.
But if you are having problems getting your Airport Extreme equipped Mac to join your network, try this.
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