HOW-TO: Hyper-V VM with Windows 7 and Apple Airport Express (802.11n) using a wired-wireless connection
To start off! Out of the box Apple does not support the configuration of a wired-wireless connection to the Apple Express (AE). So this was challenge one!
The second challenge was to create a virtual machine of Windows 7 Build 7201 with the firewall enabled.
The last challenge was to create all this in a stable way so it would work “quick” and should be “easy” to set-up. 
My used hardware/software is:
- Normal x64 PC with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 RC
- Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machine with Windows 7 build 7201, fixed IP address, firewall enabled
- Apple Express 802.11n with firmware 7.4.2. The AE is joined to my existing network (from the Davolink) with an WPA-TKIP configuration. No MAC address filtering is used. Fixed IP address.
- Apple iTunes 8.2.0.23
- Apple Airport Utility 5.4.2
- Davolink DV-2020 WiFi AP, firmware unknown
There is a wire from the PC to the Davolink WiFi AP. The link between the Davolink link and the Apple Express is wireless (DUHHH).
After setting up all the bits and hardware I ran into some nasty errors like:
“An unknown error (-15006) occurred while connecting to the remote speaker“, “The remote speaker cannot be found on your network. Please verify your network settings and AirTunes configuration or select another speaker from the menu at the bottom of the iTunes window.” and the most nasty one (because there was no direct real error message) the loosing of sound and connection to the AE.
Than the troubleshooting started! Firewall on, firewall off, different versions of iTunes, upgrade firmware on AE, multiple reboots of all the hardware and software in many orders etc etc.
Then the EUREKA moment arrived eventually after 18 hours! What is it, what is it, what is it!!!
I found the magic sequence in how to get the sound blasting out of my speakers.
- Setup the AE to join an existing wireless network
- Boot all the hardware and software in a not-specific order.
- Fire-up the Apple Airport Utility and manually connect to the AE.
- Reboot or update the AE without making any changes!
- Start iTunes and check if you can select the remote speakers at the right bottom
- Stop the Bonjour service! (The holly grail!!!) but leave the start-up type at Automatic.
So….surprised?
In the end I was because the Bonjour service should keep the remote speakers discovered for eternity because that’s the whole point of the service, not to “disconnect� them after an hour��.
This worked for me…will it work for you? Please let me know!
UPDATE:
After reading many, many, many postings on Apple forums I applied the folowing tip. This seems to make it even more stable.
Open iTunes > Edit > Preferences > Advanced Tab > Streaming Buffer Size > Set this to LARGE!
The larger the “chunks”, the lesser the posibility that set-recieve errors can occure…..sounds fine to me!
