Yes, I'm one of those annoying people who basically never learned how to do anything myself, and now have a problem I don't know how to troubleshoot so need someone to help me out yet again. Last night around 11PM, my wireless connection suddenly disappeared, but my computer asked me if I wanted to connect to another network, so I connected to a neighbor's unsecured whatever. Today, I get home from work and try to find out what's going on, the modem and the airport express have all the right lights lit up, but I don't know what my network was called, have no idea what my password was if I even knew at all, and now don't know how to start to figure it out. Any ideas? I'll buy anyone who can tell me what to do in a way that I can also understand dinner and a few good beers. Thanks and sorry in advance.

Vicki, assuming you're using a Mac, start up Airport Utility. If you don't know where it is, do a Spotlight search for it. Otherwise, it should be located in "Utilities" folder in your "Application" folder.

Once you've started up Airport Utility, click on "Manual Setup" button.

After this, you should see buttons/tabs for "Summary," "Base Station," "Wireless," and "Access Control." Click on "Wireless."

You should see a box named "Wireless Network Name" - that's your network name.

Now, on your menu bar on the top, click on your WiFi icon and you *should* see your network name listed - click on that. It should automatically connect without any hassle at this point.

If it asks for a password at this point, do the following.

Spotlight search for "Keychain Access."

Look for your network name on the list. Double click on it. A small window should pop up.

Near the bottom of the window, there's a box for "Show Password" - check the box and enter your login password. After doing this, it should show your network password.

Your Airport Express is your network? If so, just un-plug it and plug it in again. Mine flakes out occasionally in this way.

On your Mac, in the menu bar at the top of the screen, on the right, do you have an icon for the wireless at all? It looks like a striped fan showing signal strength like cell phones do. If not, we can take care of that another way.

I'll be active in the chat in just over a couple of hours if you want live help.

Oops, I misread airport express for extreme.

Please ignore my post - I thought you had airport extreme.

I'm going in to chat now, Amos, but my neighbor's wireless network is even slower than my 3g on my ipad.

I don't know what I have, Haj, to tell you the truth. It's a white squarish box. That's all I know.

Does it plug direct into the wall? If so, you have express.

If it has a separate power brick, you have extreme.

It is a white box attached to a small white box that looks like a pico slim on steroids. Is that a power brick?

Sounds like you have extreme.

Okay, unplugging it and plugging it back in again worked, and I have also now publicly revealed how really idiotic I am, but also remembered the name of my network, which is good. Time to get one of those mac for dummies books. Thanks, guys.

hooray

Sounds like you should have gone with the IT Crowd advice from the get go

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpmLrz_lSuE

Sounds like you should have gone with the IT Crowd advice from the get go

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpmLrz_lSuE

Considering that's what I usually do with my own airport issues, I can't believe I didn't think of it.

Well, in the words of the great poet Charles Olson, "I had to learn the simplest things last."

I had the exact same thing happen to me a couple of nights ago, so my guess is that they just flake out sometimes and need a restart.

Fucking sunspots.

You should tell people it's solar wind. It's blowing outward from the sun all the time, but because it's photons, we don't feel it, but because RF waves are so light, they are blown about all the time.

I don't think mine had ever gone out before or maybe I just don't remember.