[DBursey]

For months my airport express unit has been working to connect my Linksys wireless router enabled network of two macs to my home stereo, with no issues.

Alas today my linksys gave up the ghost. "No problem, I'll just configure my airport express as a wireless router. Well, I hook it up to my DSL modem and use the Airport assistant to re-configure it for wireless broadband routing.

When I finally connect everything, the new network signal shows up and is selected, but I can't connect to the internet. Everything seems to have been set up properly, but none of my apps will connect to the internet. So I disconnect everything, connect the DSL directly to my imac and set up internet sharing, Luckily that works fine.

Why won't my airport express 'deliver' the internet connection? Any ideas? As I said, everything appears normal. The airport express network can be seen and selected, but all apps time out in trying to connect to the internet. I did reset the thing, and went though the setup from scratch.

Aside; I've had the strangest experiences with my macs. The most simple of things give me fits (in regards to configuring networking, for example) where at work my experience with windows has been smooth under the hood. Whereas at home I'm a glaring exception to the 'ease of use' mac rule it seems. How do I spell Macintosh? F-R-U-S-T-R-A-T-I-N-G.

[SWFan]

My guess is some of the WDS/bridging functionality is still stuck in there. To make sure you've got it cleaned out I would try a full reset on the AX. If you go to apple.com/support and do a search for resetting airport express you'll find detailed instructions on how to reset your unit to factory defaults.

Once that is done, then run through the Airport Assistant and hopefully you'll be good to go.

[Simon]

Plug the AP Express into the wall socket. Connect it to the cable modem with an Ethernet cable.

Take a paper clip and push the reset button (the tiny gray button next to the ports). Press and hold for a full ten seconds. Make sure you see the status light flash quickly several times. This tells you that the AP Express has been reset to factory settings. Give it 5 minutes to do its boot thing. Launch AirPort Utility and select the AP Express which should now be labeled with a generic name like 'Apple 30F0E8' or something similar (IIRC the alphanumeric sequence is the last part of the AP ID). Set it to 'Create a wireless network'. Do not select WDS.

If that doesn't work it's kicked the bucket. Time to get a warranty replacement or, in case you're out of warranty, buy a new one.