I bought one of the new, second-gen, Apple TVs a few months back. It has worked mostly well up until a couple days ago, and it’s been especially fun streaming content to it via iDevices. Now it will no longer connect to either of our home WiFi networks. After running through some basic troubleshooting […]
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R.I.P., My Apple TV

Apr 6th 2011 by

AppleTV2

 

I bought one of the new, second-gen, Apple TVs a few months back. It has worked mostly well up until a couple days ago, and it’s been especially fun streaming content to it via iDevices.

Now it will no longer connect to either of our home WiFi networks. After running through some basic troubleshooting steps myself, I spoke to Apple Support and their verdict is that there’s a hardware fault with the Apple TV and I can take it in to a local Apple store for an exchange.

Just in case any of you are seeing similar issues, I’ll share the details of my issue here …

The Apple TV has connected without issues to our home WiFi networks since I first got it. Starting a couple days ago, when I went to use it it threw up a big error block at the top of its screen saying it was not connected to the network. And of course it’s unable to do anything much beyond displaying its menus without a network connection.

I went to Settings > General > Network > Configure Wi-Fi – and tried to join both of our WiFi networks, numerous times just to ensure I hadn’t fat-fingered the password. Every time I entered the network password the ATV came back with:

‘There was a problem connecting to the network – Error 3906’.

I tried power cycling the wireless router and then the ATV, more than once, and still got the same error when trying to connect.

I knew I should probably test with an ethernet cable at this stage, but was feeling lazy and just called Apple Support. And of course they started with having me test connection with an ethernet cable. The ATV connected fine through the cable (from router to ATV) and the Apple tech asked whether that would be good enough. I of course said No – my primary reason for getting the ATV was to mess around with AirPlay, which requires WiFi.

So next the Apple tech suggested a restore of the ATV – and we did this via Settings > General > Reset – and chose the Restore option.

After the restore, the ATV did not even see our WiFi networks.

At that point the Apple tech suggested I go get it replaced at a local Apple store. Luckily I have an Apple store that’s only around 5 miles away – so I’ll be swapping it this afternoon.

Hopefully I’ll have a working replacement by this evening.

Anyone else had similar issues with their Apple TV 2?

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