Home Forums Networks & Cross-Platform Networking Airport is missing

I'm using a Macbook pro 2.4 Mz OS 10.7.4

I have a couple of old Airport Express Base stations. A week ago I set them up so that one works for remote printing and the other for playing music in another room in the house. They were fine. I left them plugged into the wall sockets but turned off the power as I will only use them occasionally. I have just tried to use the printer network and it just can't be detected by my Macs or the Airport Utility 5.6 that I used to set it up. The base station is flashing orange but neither of my Macs can 'see' it.
The other base station is working fine.
I have tried to reset it and the orange light flashed quickly for a few seconds but still nothing detected.
Any thoughts?

Question: when you say "they were fine", did you actually test the different uses you configured the Expresses for after that initial setup? If so, I have noticed occasional issues with Airports not coming back up after power interruptions. There shouldn't be a need to reset them (with the subsequent reconfiguration routine). Power cycling them again (if necessary) after rebooting the Mac usually takes care of things.

It's also possible that the Express farthest away from the Base station has a marginal reception, perhaps aggravated by interference. Moving that one around or just closer to the Base station could clue you in as to that possibility.

Perhaps also relevant: did you configure them as separate networks, or as one extending the other?

Thanks for your reply, it has sorted itself out. After a few hours it appeared! But as I had reset it I had to set it up again.
Not too sure why this happened, the Base Station was in the same room as the Macs, interesting that you mention a power interruption issue, maybe it was this. Next time I will just have to plug it in a few hours before I want to print!!..............the convenience of wi-fi

Good to hear that things returned to normal. Should the issue recur, try power cycling the Express first, if needed followed by rebooting the Mac. Give the Express a few minutes to get its act together afterward (usually things return to normal after a minute or two). Resetting the Express is an option if none of this works, but by then something else may be going on with it, your network or its settings.