Q: Messages/FaceTime broken in 10.8.5

David: Nope.  My MBP has been solid since day 1.  No replacements, no problems.  No weird or unusual software or System Preferences tweaks, either.  It's a pretty stock machine.  I did have some Keychain Access-related trouble after the Apple Development site got hacked and they had to rebuild everything on their end.  That was back in August, I think.  Short of deleting and renewing a couple of development Provisions, that was the extent of it.  Until the day before yesterday, when I upgraded to 10.8.5, Messages worked fine.

David: Overlooked the Serial Number question.  Yep, I have one.  It's not a generic "System Serial#".

Hi Eric and DavidNYC,

A couple of things.

In Messages (before you even tackle the Start up Screen) you technically have two accounts already.

The iMessages one and the Bonjour one.

Neither can be deleted and the iMessages one needs an Apple ID

Also neither can be added the the Mail, Contacts and Calendars pane in System preferences.

After you set up the Messages account or via the Mail, Contacts and Calendars items you set up what used to be the iChat type accounts (AIM, Jabber and Yahoo).

If you migrated a Mac User Account it is possible you will have older iChat Accounts already added by the time you can look in Messages > Preferences > Accounts.

@DavidNYC

There are some historic causes:-

FaceTime, Game Center, Messages: Troubleshooting sign in issues

Not mentioned in that article is the issue of the missing Serial Number which I see you mention below - I don't think this has raised it head again.

Linc is probably right in his evaluation that the shortest fix time-wise will be a restore of the OS.

Deleting com.apple.imservice.imessages.plist and com.apple.imessages.bag.plist will remove the ID and the linked "Aliases"  the mac version has for iMessages - causing you to have to reset up the iMessages account.

You could try deleting the Auth-tokens in the Keychain Access app for FaceTime and Messages but I am stuggling to see why they would have become corrupt and would be hard pressed to create a proper argument as to why you should do this.

Some  people have suggested that you (anyone) should visit the Apple ID site and make sure your account has info such as the iPhone Number.

Personally I have not had to do this.  I have two iPhones and use two different Apple IDs  and do not allow the Mac Version to add the second iPhone or it's Apple ID as an "Alias".

My two apple IDs are linked to the same iCloud account.

However it does not have to be an iCloud ID.

Having said the last two items it is possible that Apple have done something relating to the "security" of using an Apple ID - similar to the Serial Number - but possibly based on info held at Apple.

However the info on the OS X 10.8.5 suggests Messages  is untouched and there is no suggestion of any changes to support apps for Messages

An alternative to Restoring the whole OS is to download and run the COMBO version of the Update over what you have.

8:59 pm      Tuesday; September 17, 2013

  iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.4)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad

"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

Ok, I figured it out. You need to open iMessage and go to your preferences. If it says your account is (inactive) on the left, you need to select phone number or email or both. It will prompt for your Apple password and then it will log you back into your account. I closed it and restarted iMessage. It works!

Hi,

It is like doing Archive and Install when there was an INstall Disk.

It only "replaces" the OS and does not touch anything else.

In this case it does include the apps that come with the OS install.

7:42 pm      Thursday; September 19, 2013

  iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.4)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad

"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

Good to hear.

7:43 pm      Thursday; September 19, 2013

  iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.4)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad

"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

me too!  I do not have a serial # (replaced) and I have the identical problems with messages.

What does this mean?

"Ok, I figured it out. You need to open iMessage and go to your preferences. If it says your account is (inactive) on the left, you need to select phone number or email or both. It will prompt for your Apple password and then it will log you back into your account. I closed it and restarted iMessage. It works!"

I see nothing that says "phone number or email or both".

It just says, "ENTER APPLE ID"  "Sign in with your Apple ID to activate iMessage"

When I type my PW it spins for a long time and then says "Cannot sign in to iMessage"  "Could not sign in.  please check your network connection and try again".

Clearly since I am sending this email I have a network connection.  What gives???

Annoyed and intrigued, I got out the "big guns," and tried to figure out what's going on.  First, using dtruss to monitor the Messages process system calls, I see it tries to create a socket a number of times, but gets a ton of __semwait_signal timeout errors.  I don't see any attempts to connect() off of that socket.  In other cases where it calls socket(), Messages does something with it: bind(), connect(), sendto(), ioctl(), etc.

At some point, Messages begins a sequence where it opens a socket, holds it for a while doing nothing with it, then closes it to immediately open it again.  In that sequence, it does a number of actions on ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain.  I can't tell what, exactly.  It copies it to a temporary file, does something to the temp file, then renames it back to the original.  Not much to go on, there.

Using Wireshark on the local network connection, I see some encrypted traffic between my machine and a server under the Akamai network.  The data's encrypted, so I can't read it.  In the most recent packet capture, I see what looks like two attempts to connect to the server.  In the first attempt, I send a sizeable chunk - 4103 bytes - to Akamai's server, which ACKs (acknowledges), and then I send another moderate sized block of 1879 bytes.  Akamai ACKs a number of times, and then sends 1095 bytes back, to which I ACK.  Then, 30 seconds later, I repeat the process beginning with the 4103 byte block, followed by a much smaller 311 byte block, which nets the same ACK sequence.  Shortly after the last packet to Akamai's server, I get the "Could not sign in to iMessage" alert box.  Not sure what the problem is, but it looks like timeout issues of sorts.  What's it doing, or waiting for, in those 30 seconds?  What's with the unused sockets?

Hi,

If the Serial Number has not been "flashed" back to the new Logic board then you will need to visit an Apple Store or Apple Authorised Service Provider to have this done.

7:59 pm      Tuesday; September 24, 2013

  iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.4)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad

"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

Hi,

What markellk was saying is that after you have managed to "Register" your Apple ID with the iMessages server it is possible that some selection boxes that list other emails or iPhone numbers (where they are used on an iPhone for instance) may need to be ticked/Selected.

There is also a separate Enable box that need to be selected post registration.

This:-

When I type my PW it spins for a long time and then says "Cannot sign in to iMessage"  "Could not sign in.  please check your network connection and try again".

Means that the iMessages Apple ID you are using is not registering with the iMessages Server.

You probably need to work through this Apple item

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3970

8:07 pm      Tuesday; September 24, 2013

  iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.4)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad

"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

Huh.  Well, I don't know.  I rebooted after installing an unrelated app, and, for giggles, brought up Messages, which again refused to connect.  Made sure the account was enabled under the Messages -> Accounts button.  I told it to connect again, and, while the beach ball was spinning for the connection, I clicked on "Sign Out" in the Accounts panel and then clicked on "Details," in which I logged in with my Apple ID.  More correctly, I just typed in my password; it had my Apple ID.  After that, it connected.  So, make sure the account is Enabled, and then try to Sign Out and back in again.  Good luck!

I still have this exact same problem and cannot solve it, for weeks now.

both imessages and facetime refuse to accept the apple id

Hi,

This is a very old thread.

You are using Mountain Lion at OS X 10.8.5 ?

Has the iMessages account worked at any time since you installed the OS X 10.8.2 update ?

Is the Serial Number present ?

9:02 pm      Thursday; September 25, 2014