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I purchased two of the current model Airport Expresses while I was in the US a few months ago. Now that I'm back in Australia, the only options I have when setting the country in Wireless Options are in the Americas. How can I get the Airport Express to allow me to change the region to Asia-Pacific, which would allow me to select Australia as the Country?

Note: The reason I want to set the Country is that I've been having reception problems, so I want to be able to ensure that my WiFi setup is running on the right channels for other "Australian-configured" WiFi gear.

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You need to do a firmware reset (factory default) – see http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3728

Beforehand, ensure:

  1. the mac through which you will be setting up the Airport Express (ie by use of Airport Utility) is set to Australia in its preferences (e.g. on MacOS these are System Preferences/International/Format and System Preferences/Date & Time/Time Zone).

  2. the Airport Express can connect to the internet within Australia, at the time of first set up after resetting the firmware back to factory defaults.

I believe the firmware attempts to determine its location on first setup (either via the IP address it sees on initial connection, or off the computer), which it then writes into its firmware.

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I tried doing a Factory Defaults reset, which didn't work, and then a Hard Reset, but no luck. Do you have some reason to believe that this would work, or were you just guessing? – Nick Forge Oct 9 '12 at 12:08
I was deducing that due to the fact there isn't multiple firmware files released that it detects locality through connected pc or network. Reading around further it seems that the Airport Expresses are actually manufactured for sale in certain regional localities, and have embedded information to lock it to the region. Thought it was worth a try to see if it would work. – RobZolkos Oct 9 '12 at 12:23
That was exactly what I was thinking/hoping - I actually tried what you suggested minutes before reading your answer! :-) One other possibility is that the region is set when the firmware is updated, so when the next firmware update comes out, it might update then. – Nick Forge Oct 9 '12 at 12:30

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