Airport intermittently loses signal

[jav]

We have an iMac G5 that has been working with a DLink 11g network through a range extender for several months.

Recently, the iMac has started losing signal. For example, this morning my wife was on the Internet, then left off for about an hour. When she returned, Safari said there was no network and the Airport icon indicated no signal. After some unproductive fiddling, I shut down the computer, including unplugging it to make sure I had a full hardware reset, then restarted. A box popped up asking for an administrator name and password to make changes to OS X. I entered them and the icon at once indicated a strong signal and all was well.

A few hours later, I tried to get into the web and when I woke the system up the Airport icon again indicated no signal and the administrator name/password box popped up. After entering name and password Airport again worked.

This sort of thing has been happening off and on for a couple of weeks.

Do we have a hardware or a software problem? And also I am concerned that the system may be running exposed in administrator mode all the time.

 

[Paulg66@ntlworl]

I have the same thing happening with my G3 (OSX 10.2.9). We are using an airport graphite connected to ntl broadband, which works perfectly with my Powerbook G4 (OSX 10.3.9). Any ideas???

 

[sgould]

What firmware do you have on the Airport Extreme? I had severe problems using a D-Link modem with the Airport Extreme Base Station when I upgraded to version 5.6. I reverted to Firmware version 5.5.1 and all has been well since.

 

[fitlybound]

I seem to have a similar problem with mine. I just bout a used ibook with an aiport card included to have another computer to use when my partner is taking up the other one. I had an old graphite base station that I hooked up to our DSL modem so I could surf the net wirelessly. Mine keeps dropping signal and I've about pulled my hair out trying to eliminate any sources of interference. Of course I'm in an apt complex so I can't eliminate EVERYTHING, but mine will just lose signal and on the base station the lights go out and then all 3 blink amber and then it usually works again. Sometimes it works for a few minutes adn then drops and sometimes it drops and reconnects on and off every 15-30 seconds. Do you think I might have a hardware problem with the base station or am I just hitting the interference from all the other peoples phones and junk in my apt complex? If it is probably interference then do the new airport express stations have the same problem? I don't think this laptop would even support an extreme card since it's an old g3 600mhz and I really don't wanna have to spend anymore money on more equipment. I know in the aiport admin utility there are all kinds of settings and I wonder if any of those might help eliminate the problem? Any help is greatly appreciated!