imessage and Facetime sign in activation error iPad ios8.1.2

I am sorry that I have nothing to offer other than what you are experiencing seems to be more and more prevalent over the past few weeks. I have seen more people posting about this over the past two weeks than I will see for weeks and weeks. I just cannot believe that it is a software or hardware issue especially when I read posts like yours and like this one here.

Tried everything, FaceTime has an error occurred during activation on my iPad Air.

Problem: iPad Air 2 (wifi only) FaceTime and iChat broken. Trying to log in to either results in dead-end looping back to the log-in procedure. I have multiple Apple IDs and none will log in successfully.

The Apple support guy I've been working with acknowledged that there are several of his colleagues reporting the same problem; and further evidence of the problem's scope can be found at Apple discussion sites, like this one... https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6789149

My son-in-law, the lead iOS engineer for a startup in Denver, personally worked on my iPad trying to solve this problem. He assured me it was solvable. In the end (after 2 hours of work and research on various of Apple's Support sites and no resolution), he came to the conclusion that the Facetime/iChat problem is a PROBLEM, widespread and Apple's to solve.

Here's what he found out along the way:

1. His two Apple IDs worked on my iPad while others did not.
2. He created a new Apple ID and it did not work.
3. The Apple IDs that did not work on my iPad did work on his iPhone.

We tried:

1. Reset Network settings. Didn't work-
2. Reset All settings. Didn't work-
3. Hard reset of the iPad. Used home button and off button to reset. Didn't work-

<Edited By Host>

Add me to the train. Ipad Air here, iOS 8.1.2.

The iMessage and Facetime menus allow only to enter the password, and then throws an error. Entering the wrong email and password, cancelling and entering the correct ones sometimes gives me a message on iPhone that my iPad has beed successfully activated to use the feature, but these menus do not change on the iPad, still a login and an empty password, and incoming iMessages still no not display.

It's worth mentioning that my iPhone works flawlessly with these features, and it has my phone number in the list also (not just emails).

Also on iPad in case, when I open the Messages app, I'm presented with the same request to enter the password, and the sasme error appears afterwards. I surely tried to make the fake id trick there also, and sometimes it allows me to go to the next step and select emails/phone, but after the setup, it again fails immediately and still wants the password.

Another problem related to that is the message relay function activation on iPhone, that should allow passthrough of iMessages from iPhone to iPad. The iPad is there at the list, but switching it on tells me to enter the passcode that should appear on the iPad, and this message never appears there, so I'm unable to enter the code to iPhone.

Seems like there's some glitch on their servers. Maybe Apple should just reset all iMessage settings on their servers for users that demand that, and give them an ability to enter the related information from the scratch?

P. S. Is there any progress in the field of getting rid of that stupid error?

I've had this issue for about a week on my iPad Air. iMessage and FaceTime had logged me out overnight. Been on this thread - Re: Can't log into iMessage or FaceTime but although restarts worked for a couple of the people on there even though they'd done it before, it didn't work for me. I have done all the usual things, resets, restored from backup (as far back as November) set up as new iPad and none of it works. After a reset I do get to choose which phone and emails I want to use, but then when I tap NEXT it flicks back to the sign in. I wiped it and set it up with my wife's Apple ID. Wouldn't work with her details either. Had an old iPad 4th Gen which I was about to sell, which I'd already wiped. I set that up with my Apple ID and that worked OK, so I concluded it was my iPad Air that was at fault.

I assume when you restore and delete everything that it doesn't actually delete the core apps such as Messages because it seems to happen too quickly. It took ages to download ios8 initially and yet the restores don't take long at all to bring up the main apps which makes me think they stay in memory while everything else gets deleted. Don't know if that's the case.

Came to the conclusion it must be Apple and have just done a reset every day in the hope that one day it will work.

This happen to me on Monday night. I was FaceTime audioing my friend for about half an hour on my iPad Air. It started acting weird and the iPad logged me out of FaceTime and iMessage. When I tried signing back in it kept giving me an error message. I called up AppleCare about this and it so happen that Apple released the iOS 8.1.3 update to fix this exact issue. Update my iPad and didn't work. Went to the Apple Store and they were about to replace my iPad with a new one until I stopped him and ask him to let me test it. Tried signing in to my FaceTime and iMessage with the new iPad Air and didn't work neither. I called up AppleCare again and told me to backup my iPad to iTunes or iCloud and restore from the backup. But I told them I can't be my device because I tried it with a brand new iPad! I told them restore it from the backup isn't an option since some specific games have don't have a cloud backup like angry birds transformers. Please fix this problem Apple! Note: FaceTime and iMessage work just fine on my iPhone 5s, iPod touch 5th gen, and MacBook Pro.

I Had the exact same problem and after following all the steps at If you get an error when trying to activate iMessage or FaceTime - Apple Support

i did several resets. Nothing seemed to work until I used my iCloud account to sign in rather than my Apple ID I got in. Apple ID did not work at all. Not sure if this will work for you but it did for me ... Good luck!

Edit

I have just been hit with this problem. The only thing I haven't tried is an erase-and-restore, since others have tried it with no luck (but see important update below).

I'm using an iPhone 5 running iOS 8.1.3 (12B466) (the latest, as of 11-February) and was using iMessage as recently as four hours before noticing iMessage was broken. I accidentally saw that I'm supposed to be able to use my iPhone as a conduit for sending SMS messages from my Macintosh. When I tried to set that up on my phone, it asked for my AppleID password, which it could never authenticate, and suddenly iMessage was broken.

When I try to activate iMessage on my phone, I continuously see "Waiting for activation..." under the iMessage switch. If I turn the switch to "off" then "on" again, I get the error message "iMessage Activation An error occurred during activation. Try again."

I also see the same "Waiting for activation..." message when I turn FaceTime on. Other uses of my AppleID don't cause any problem: I can log out and back into Find My Friends and Game Center, for example. I can also log into Messages on my Macintosh with the same ID, as well as "Manage My ID" at https://appleid.apple.com/account/manage.

If I turn off and back on iMessages on my iPad, the "Waiting for activation..." message appears briefly, then the process finishes. My ancient iPhone 3GS (running iOS 6.1.6; I have it on a seldom-used phone number) works fine — I can log out of iMessages and log back in and use it.

I finally decided to do an erase-and-restore, and that actually "fixed" the iMessage problem. "Fixed" is in quotes because it didn't actually fix it, it just patched it. The last time I backed up my phone, iMessage was working fine because I was already logged into the iMessage system. Sure enough, as soon as I tried to do something (turning iMessage off and back on), it was instantly broken again.

But when I did *another* erase-and-restore, I had it back again, and I'm not going to mess with it. I'll try again after they release iOS 8.1.4.

What does this mean for y'all?

IF iMessage HAD BEEN WORKING SOMEWHAT RECENTLY FOR YOU, you should see if you have a backup from before it went bad, and try the erase-and-restore option.

If you've got this problem because your device has never been activated and logged into the iMessage system, I sincerely doubt this will help, since it is only working because the restored state has it working.

Hopefully Apple will figure this one out quickly.

I am experiencing the same problems. My iMessage automatically stopped working yesterday. I tried the following;

• Turning Airplane Mode on and off - no luck
• Setting time and date - no luck
• Resetting network connection - no luck
• Restarting including updating software to IOS 8.1.2 - no luck
• Deactivating iMessage on all devices then reconnecting one by one starting with the Mac - no luck
• Rebooted modem - no luck
• Troubleshooted with mobile network provider - no luck
• Managed Apple ID and checked all the details match - no luck
• Even changed passwords - no luck

I have repeated all the above multiple times and other suggestions online and no luck. If there is an answer to our problem it would be great. I somehow think its the software update as this happened with the previous update for me and it took months to rectify.

Same thing haunting my iPad.

iMessage and FaceTime connections fail in a strange way: they accept the password, then they display the email addresses associated with my ID, but then both go back to the login screen. It looks like a timeout, the alert says "There was an error in the connection"

The bizarre thing is that iCloud/App Store connect normally. A second iPad on the same network and Apple ID shows no problem with the same configuration.

I have already tried several things and restarted after each one of them:

1. change password
2. change appleID
3. forget wifi
4. restart my router
5. connect to a different network
6. set time zone automatically
7. revert to the last backup (when there was no issue)
8. check reachability of verisign.net

The os is iOs 8.1.2

I have a hard time believing that the device time is the root cause for a couple of reasons.

1. My account ~5 years old works fine on our iPad Mini, my wife's account less than 5 days old will not work
2. Our iPad Mini 3 is an LTE model with an active sim in it. According the post above time should be acquired from the cell network.

The support i have experienced so far from apple so far has been some of the worst I have experience with any form of customer/tech support.

• Opening with "how are today?" feels forced and unnecessary.
• empathizing and agreeing that my broken feature is important and the can understand how frustrating it can be when it is not working
• followed by your intentions to resolve the issue on the call today

is not helpful when

• how i am is likely less than happy if i am calling tech support
• more frustrated trying to get support on a brand new device than trying to get a feature working
• the call ends with no meaningful progress and no feeling that I should expect the issue to be fixed in any targeted timeframe

Package this all together with an undertone of we are completely baffled by your issues and no other customer has ever had a problem like this attitude leaves me to wonder if my support person is clueless or instructed to deny any possible flaws with the product because apple is perfect.

I have called multiple times and have has a few call backs over the last week and none have made me feel like it is actually being looked and that I should have any expectations that the issue is going to be fixed.

Also, to have one second level tech be my one and only contact aggravates even further when I have no idea when they work and no other second level can access their notes on the case.

As far as I have been able to determine from posts here (AppleCare won't say anything) the things we have in common

• It's all email addresses used as AppleIDs
• It's all iPads, at least to start (I couldn't log in on an iPod touch once my ID quit)
• It's mostly iPad Mini 3s with possibly a few new iPad Airs
• It's all AppleIDs that were used for FaceTime/iMessage for the first time after the middle of March (I had an AppleID I made in January but didn't set up iMessage and Facetime till March 14. It worked until sometime in the early hours of March 20. I set my husband's ID up March 14 and it worked on his iPod even after mine didn't work on my iPad. His ID didn't work on my iPad either once mine stopped working but my friend who has had an Apple ID forever was able to use my iPad for iMessage. She also has a linked iPhone with a phone number)
• They're all wifi. As far as I know no one with a wifi+cellular has had this problem
• We all have iOS 8.2 or 8.3

So what this tells me is that it's possibly a 2 or 3 part problem.

The AppleID for some people won't work on other devices for some people. Some people can use some devices and some people can use all devices. So there's something weird about the ID or the database it's accessing to validate.

The cell iPads get their time from the cell tower. The wifi Minis especially have a rep for losing time. That's why I think sometimes having the wifi mini automatically get the timezone and time worked for some people and not for others - it also depends on how it's getting the time automatically. I don't know.

The update. lots of people have said it was working before 8.2 or 8.3. If you look around this forum, there are old posts (and even the beginning of this one) that people made when 8.0 came out or 7.something came out and all of a sudden people couldn't use FaceTime or iMessage. The last time before this was in January, and I think they sorted that out for a lot of people behind the scenes and by telling people to make sure their time zone and time were right (or both) so I think the time is still important in combination with other things.

As far as I can tell, one person made a new AppleID that worked. Lots of people made a new one that didn't work. Nothing works for everyone so I suspect there is more than one cause (or combination of causes)

Sorry to write a novel and I hope y'all chime in!

Mine suddenly started working after a month - on April 22nd. The engineers had my account in test mode for over a week. My tech guy called once to see if it was working but it wasn't even after I restarted it. On the 22nd, I was messing with the time and realized it was closer to real time than ever and tried signing in and it worked. Was it something the engineers did? Something I did? The combination - it needed something they did and something I did? I have no idea. The won't respond to me.

&#39;shana wrote:

As far as I have been able to determine from posts here (AppleCare won't say anything) the things we have in common

• It's all email addresses used as AppleIDs
• It's all iPads, at least to start (I couldn't log in on an iPod touch once my ID quit)
• It's mostly iPad Mini 3s with possibly a few new iPad Airs
• It's all AppleIDs that were used for FaceTime/iMessage for the first time after the middle of March(I had an AppleID I made in January but didn't set up iMessage and Facetime till March 14. It worked until sometime in the early hours of March 20. I set my husband's ID up March 14 and it worked on his iPod even after mine didn't work on my iPad. His ID didn't work on my iPad either once mine stopped working but my friend who has had an Apple ID forever was able to use my iPad for iMessage. She also has a linked iPhone with a phone number)
• They're all wifi. As far as I know no one with a wifi+cellular has had this problem
• We all have iOS 8.2 or 8.3

I have an iPad 3rd Gen Wifi 32 gb with iOS 7.1.1. Been running iMessage/Facetime perfectly for years. Exact same problem since a few days. I have tried everything - except updating iOS which I want to avoid and judging from this thread and other sources that doesn't seem to help anyway. Nothing seems to work. I haven't been in contact with customer support yet though. Looking at this thread I understand your theory, but it also happens to other devices. I think it is just a coincidence that most people have the devices you listed. Or they may be affected to a higher degree. But they are not the only devices with this problem.

This is awful. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple themselves are clueless, or it is a huge database flaw/error which they only can fix by resetting/rebuilding verification keys one by one. 😟

Hello everyone!

• It's all email addresses used as AppleIDs ✅
• It's all iPads, at least to start✅
• It's mostly iPad Mini 3s with possibly a few new iPad Airs ✅
• It's all AppleIDs that were used for FaceTime/iMessage for the first time after the middle of March✅
• They're all wifi.✅
• We all have iOS 8.2 or 8.3 ✅

I ticked the points above which are right for my problem, and look .. they ALL are!

Brand new Ipad mini3 with wifi only, that we gave to our son for his birthday (haha birthday glitch, except that he isn't 87 yet 😁), the imessage worked for 1 day and then just stopped. Now I can't sign in, it keeps asking me password, silently. I touch "sign in" and then happens nothing.

(I guess I'm writing it for statistics only 😠)

• First rule of apple support, act surprised that a customer has a problem with the perfect product.
• Second rule of apple support, flatly deny the possibility that any other customer would also experience a similar issue.
• Third rule of apple support, take all the customer information, tell them "we have escalated the problems to the engineers", end the call and hope the customer forgets there is a problem with the perfect product.

Take comfort in the fact that Apple will happily talk with you and will empathize with how frustrating it can be that the device is not working properly. Also, they will tell you the will do what they can to fix the problem.

Just try to forget that person has no ability to address your problem. They have no interest in providing any kind of expectation on when a fix will be available and get particularly annoyed that you call back regularly requesting a progress update. Generally they prefer you not call back at all.

Apple considers the job done when your cash is deposited into there bank account.

You should be thanking them for letting you have the privilege of owning an Apple device.