Airport ability to connect suddenly diminished

[gazzerdc]

This is a little long, but I wanted to give you the whole "backstory."

This is very weird. I noticed that my Quicksilver 2002 G4 was getting sluggish on line. It's in one part of the house. I played with the airport config, changed channels, all the stuff you can do. Sometimes, it would get "faster" for awhile, then get sluggish again. We have a desk in the den where we plug in the iBOOK (yes, everything is ancient in comp time: all from 2002/03. But all the cards work, everything is fine, have upgraded hard drives, etc. so this is not the issue). This was about 60 feet way.

Now, here's the weird thing: I finally decided to see whether it was the airport express/modem, so I moved the modem/airport express (not extreme, again OLD from 2002) near the G4 and VIOLA! Fast, fast, fast. But, now we can't connect to the 'net with the laptop unless it is also about 20 feet (no more) away. We walk through the house and literally watch the connection fail at about 20 feet.

So, suddenly (no new housing construction, microwave in kitchen not on, no new rooms, no new metal roofs, etc) without warning, we cannot use the airport express from about 50-75 feet away. It connected for six months; now it doesn't. The airport express works fine and I get all the bars on both computers if you're practically on top of it. But it stopped being able to connect with any distance at all.

So, would doing a hard reboot do anything? I've done everything else. I'm afraid to do the hard reboot since APPLE doesn't like to give consumers support for anything older than nine months....so, I'm concerned that if I do a hard reboot on the Airport Express that I won't be able to download the proper software/firmware to get it going again (I haven't had Classic on this system since 2004 and originally I had to load using it).

Any ideas as to why and what has caused this slowdown? Do Airport Expresses just "slowly lose their distance connectivity?" Remember, nothing we know of had changed; unless someone just built a microwave tower in the neighborhood unbeknownest to us.

Thanks in advance.

 

[symphonix]

You should have no trouble updating Airport firmware to the latest version in Mac OS X, there really is no need to worry about using OS9. I would start with updating the Airport firmware first of all. Then, a hard reset on both your computer and Airport station and reconfigure.

The next thing to try would be opening up your Mac and double checking that the Airport card is plugged into its antenna properly, as these sometimes come loose.

If none of that works, and I assume you have an original Airport base station that is well out of warranty, you could try unplugging it, opening it up and checking that the WLAN card inside is seated properly and hasn't come loose.

 

[gazzerdc]

You should have no trouble updating Airport firmware to the latest version in Mac OS X, there really is no need to worry about using OS9. I would start with updating the Airport firmware first of all. Then, a hard reset on both your computer and Airport station and reconfigure.

The next thing to try would be opening up your Mac and double checking that the Airport card is plugged into its antenna properly, as these sometimes come loose.

If none of that works, and I assume you have an original Airport base station that is well out of warranty, you could try unplugging it, opening it up and checking that the WLAN card inside is seated properly and hasn't come loose.

I've done the firmware....I assume if I do a hard reset I'll have to update the firmware again?

Opening up the MACs isn't necessary. Both work fine as long as they are within 20 feet of the airport express.

I guess a loose WLAN card could make it not work at all, but would that make it lose 75% of it's "distance connectivity?"

I noticed there were lots of people since June 16th on various website/forums expressing problems with airport and loss of connectivity. Wonder if it's a conspiracy? ;-)