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iOS 7 iMessage won't activate

My iMessage & FaceTime won't work after I updated to iOS 7. Just says waiting to activate. Anyway I can fix this?

iPhone 5, iOS 7, iMessage

Posted on Sep 18, 2013 12:45 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 18, 2013 1:44 PM

I have this problem too, my iPad ok but iPhone 5 just says waiting for activation and is the same for FaceTime.


Wondered if there'd be a **** up with this upgrade.

654 replies

Sep 19, 2013 7:26 AM in response to Mizsophia90

Just to say that after trying everytjing from a full erase and restore back it was Mizsophia90's post below that finally solved it for me!


'After numerous attempts I fixed it by doing this:


Go to PRIVACY/LOCATION SERVICES/SYSTEM SERVICES/SET TIME ZONE and toggle it on. IMessage worked perfectly after that. Hope it helps you'


Many thanks I lost most of last night and this morning to this, but now I'm happy.

Sep 19, 2013 7:54 AM in response to Seanm85

I update to latest itunes software and updated to ios7 and my imsg was stuck at activating.

I got so fed up with trying to fix it I hooked it up to itunes and hit the restore backup. It told me that this wouldnt restore the firmware but I restored anyway from the last backup and all is working now. Hope this helps some people.

Cheers

Sep 19, 2013 8:27 AM in response to Seanm85

I'm having this same problem, so I finally broke down and called Apple. This is what I was told:

Apple lady-"I see that your iphone is out of the one year warranty as of July 2013. To resolve your problem today, you can choose to pay 19.99 or I can send you a trouble shooting article."

Me-"I've already been sent the trouble shooting article, and that didn't work."

Apple lady- "The only other thing I can do to help you is offer you the support. It's 19.99 and it's good for 30 days."


To get it help from apple support, I'm going to have to PAY 19.99 because of a problem on their part?? That is so messed up.

Good Luck to yall!

I was once a HUGE fan of apple products.

I now regret buying my Macbook Pro, iPad, and iPhone...

Sep 19, 2013 9:06 AM in response to Woolfman

I actually stumbled upon this issue because Find my iPhone was not registering or showing up as a device in iCloud. After some deeper digging around, I realized iMessage and Facetime were not working because I got a iMessage from a friend that showed up on MacbookPro and not my iPhone.


They appear to be related - with the overall iCloud, iMessage, Facetime activation issue.


Woolfman's directions fixed the issue for me, but I did lose music and a few apps after restoring. Those all seem to be restorable via iTunes and AppStore, though. That said backup of media embedded within apps might be advisable.


Also I restored on a backup post-upgrade. In fact, it was a backup from sheer seconds before the reset and restore process. So having a pre-ios7 backup doesn't seem to be an issue. It just needs to go through the restore and setup process to reset whatever it needs to via activation.

Sep 19, 2013 9:16 AM in response to Seanm85

Confirmed, restore from backup fixes it.


I installed IOS 7 to an iPhone 5 (via iTunes) and to an iPad 3 (OTA) yesterday, and both worked fine, except that iMessage and Facetime on the iPad kept giving me the ""check your network" error.


I had backed the iPad up via iTunes, so I restored from the backup, 5 minutes later, everything is fine.

iOS 7 iMessage won't activate

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