Can't sign in any longer to Messages after Mavericks install

Hello,

that's what I thought, too, the message is quite clear.

Unfortunately, however, two phone calls with the local French support and three to the English support have produced nothing so far. They don't know what to do with that 'Customer Code', and one of them even told me that it was not possible to install Mavericks on my MBP, because it was obsolete, even if it's a late 2007 model.

It's certainly a simple issue, but if at the other end of the line no-one is aware of that, I don't know what else to do...

Thanks,

Monica

Hello,

based on the various messages that I've found on this forum, along with several useful replies from you, I thought the same thing, that there was something wrong with those AppleIDs. After all, the error message is crystal clear: call Apple Support, give them the codes, and they'll fix it. But I've been wandering in the dark for days, now, and everything I know, I know it just because I've read all those useful posts and advices here. Anyway, so far no technician has accepted something like "as you can find on your support forums...". Each time, they try to verify if the account is locked, if there's something wrong with its details, they make me add this, delete that... but nothing changes, they don't seem to know what to do with those "Customer Codes", nor they seem to see how simple and clear that error message is.

Anyway, to add something that has already been verified by other users, I can add that I've been to one of our local Apple Stores, and there I've been able to see that each one of my 'faulty' AppleIDs can connect successfully to both Message and FaceTime on other Macs. So, those AppleIDs don't work any longer just on my Mac. Not even new ones created from scratch work, by the way.

Each of them worked on Mountain Lion 10.8.5, though, on the same Mac.

I've made two clean installs of Mavericks, but those AppleIDs don't work. Last night I've made a clean install of Mountain Lion, and they don't work anymore, even on that OS. This means that the issue is related to my Mac, but it can't simply be a local software issue. Something, on Apple's servers, is blocking the link between the serial number of my mac and every possible AppleID I've ever created or I can create from scratch. I'd really like to know what, but most of all, why.

Tomorrow I have another phone call scheduled with an AppleID expert. I hope I won't have to go through all this for each AppleID....

About the iTunes support, I've tried to follow your advice from thread "Messages won't work with iMessage after Mountain Lion install", where you have posted several screenshots, but on the last web page (the one on which I could change the password) I haven't found any email link under "other options", I'm sorry.

Thanks a lot for your support !!

Monica

Hi,

well, I had already tried to see if a new account would show the same issues, and it did, so this didn't seem to be the right path to follow. Before that, I even tried resetting the keychain, as suggested in another post about similar issues, but that didn't work either. Apple support just asked me to delete and add some accounts under both Message and FaceTime, but that led to nothing, too.

As I've said yesterday, the fact that, after three clean installs without any kind of backup restoration, neither any of my previous AppleIDs nor any newer AppleID created from scratch was able to activate both apps, to me meant that there was something wrong outside of my Mac. Today, after my latest phone call to support, this has been confirmed to be true.

Yesterday I've been lucky enough to chat with a senior advisor who then left some useful notes for today's phone call, and today, after insisting again for a few times to talk to another senior advisor, I've found another one who knew exactly what to do. Two were the possible explanations for such kind of error messages:

[1] - Something wrong might have happened to the security info of those AppleIDs, and they would need to be modified locally or remotely, or unlocked, or reset;

[2] - Something wrong might have happened to the security info of my Mac, and this would need to be modified, locally or remotely, or unlocked, or reset.

Given the fact that all my AppleIDs were able to activate both apps on other Macs at the Apple Store, the first scenario was out of question, but the second was much more interesting.

Two years ago, indeed, one of our local Apple Store had to replace the motherboard twice in just a week, because the first replacement had already some issues with the famous Nvidia chip. They registered the serial correctly on the new motherboard, but apparently something wrong happened on the back-end servers at Apple's, and the security info about that serial number was not (entirely) correct. Strangely enough, that didn't cause any issue under Snow Leopard or Mountain Lion, but the issue was triggered by the install of Mavericks, who wasn't able to deal with what it found on those servers.

I have no details of what exactly was wrong, but the senior advisor knew exactly what to do, and even if he knew just the 'Customer Code' of one of my AppleIDs, he managed to 'unlock' all the others, by correcting the anomaly on their databases.

So, at least on this case, it has been useful to:

1] Have a clean install of Mavericks - it gave me and Apple a way to be sure that there wasn't a particular third-party app causing the issue; not so important, maybe, but it also granted me support without paying any fee;

2] Check whether it was an issue related to a bad configuration of those AppleIDs, on the appleid.apple.com website;

3] Check if those AppleIDs had or not the same issues on other Macs;

4] When talking with Apple Support, insist, insist, insist that the 'Customer Code' of those error messages wasn't something to be overlooked, and try everything possible to get in touch with a senior advisor.

Then, as you said,

"With this particular message it can only be solved by using the Contact number."

One has just to be very patient...

Thanks a lot to everyone who has experienced this issue and has posted here details, configurations, workarounds and advices, and a special thanks to the two Senior Advisors who have so brilliantly helped me after two weeks of troubles !!

Monica