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I bought an AirPort Express to enable music in a different part of a friend's house using the AirTunes feature. Unfortunately, iTunes or the AirPort Utility don't reliably discover the existence of the device.
If I use the Configure Other...
function within the AirPort Utility and enter the AirPort Express' IP address and password, then I can reliably get access in a daughter window to configure it. Clicking Update
in the daughter window seems to nudge the underlying AirPort Utility into finding and displaying the AirPort Express, which it doesn't do on its own even after clicking the Rescan
button. iTunes then also seems to cotton on to this discovery and present the AiportExpress as an AirTunes option at the bottom right of iTunes. Things then work as we'd like them to.
If I close down the AirPort Utility, then iTunes loses the AirPort Express AirTunes speaker, often giving "An unkown error (-15006) occurred while connecting to the remote speaker".
Question Of course, starting the Airport Utility, forcing it to recognise the Airport Express and then starting iTunes, isn't the ease of use we were after. How do I get AirTunes working reliably? What other things might I try?
Background info:
- iTunes is running on Windows XP.
- The AirPort Express is running in wireless client mode (i.e. is connecting to an unsecured wireless network in the house with nothing connected to its ethernet port). It responds to Mulitcast ping requests.
- The network router is a Swisscom Motorola 3347NWG.
I have already tried (with Spiff's valuable help - apologies that I don't yet have enough rep to upvote his answer):
- Disabling the Windows XP firewall
- Updating the AirPort Express firmware 7.4.2, the AirPort Utility 5.5.1 and the router firmware 7.8.5r1
- Ensuring Wireless Privacy and similar potetnially problematic router settings are off
- (Re-)installing Bonjour print service, iTunes and the AirPort Utility (to maximise Bonjour's chances of working)
It currently seems that the problem is that Bonjour doesn't work across from the router's wireless LAN to it's wired LAN. If the AirPort express is connected wired, then it works.
I'm also suspicious of WinXP's Firewall. However iTunes (iTunes.exe), Airport (APAgent.exe), AirPort Utility (APUtility.exe), Bonjour (UDP 5353) and the Bonjour Service (mDNSResponder.exe) are all registered exceptions. Also, the symptoms are the same when the WinXP Firewall is switched off.
Mulitcast ping on 224.0.0.1, per Spiff's question, does get responses from the Airport Express as long as the WinXP firewall is turned off (which is as it should be I suspect - legitimate Bonjour requests should benefit from the Firewall exceptions above).
My friend's PC doesn't have a wireless card and so I can't try Spiff's other suggestion.
I found this post with a resolution that seems to work - for anyone but me :-( But you might be anyone so try it out: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11561278
– None – 2010-05-29T19:03:00.260