Q: imessage and Facetime sign in activation error iPad ios8.1.2

Thanks! I've tried everything and at the end your little suggestion was the best. Now it works!

I got yet another call back from "my" senior tech. He wanted to put my iCloud account in troubleshooting mode. But it took a while and he ran out of time before we actually did it. He called back later to tell me that the engineers had done something server side and he wanted to know if it had helped. Nope. We're going to try again next week.

I think they realize they have a problem on server side now.

SSame here. But iPad air is okay, my second iPad 3 has an activation error for iMessage and FaceTime. Did all the steps you performed to no avail. I wisha apple tech would just admit there is a problem and offer that they are working on it to alleviate all the headaches.

This is an issue on Apple's Side. The engineers sent a mass email to all senior techs that had RTAs in on Thursday. My FaceTime was up and running on Friday. Amy wouldn't tell me what they did. But it worked for both my original account and the second one that I set up but didn't work initially.

IS there any more information on this ? I am still unable to sign in.

I'm glad yours is working now! Mine still won't let me sign in, No error message.

guys, i have a feeling this issue might be related to a glitch or problem with keychain or atlas for some of us. After getting this problem i managed to get my iMessage and FaceTime to work for literally a few hours before running into the same problem again. However, right before i got it to work i had called apple again to troubleshoot a issue with keychain. When i changed my password  (something apple tech asks you to do to put your account in "troubleshoot mode") i ran into a issue with activating keychain and i think i entered the password wrongly a few times by mistake and my keychain got locked. So when i called apple another tech guy helped me with the issue by doing something on their servers end. If i'm not wrong he turned of the verification part when trying to activate my keychain on my devices allowing me to bypass it, so i just had to turn it on and no sms of the verification code etc. So once i got that solved, later that night i randomly just tried to logged in on iMessage/facetime and i went right in, no issues. The next day of course it stopped working again.

Now why i say it might be keychain related is because, how coincidental is that when i troubleshoot with keychain all of a sudden iMessage and FaceTime comes back running again. Also thats not the only thing, on my mac when i try to activate FaceTime particularly i get this error:

FaceTime wants your confidential information stored in "IDS:MYAPPLEID-authtoken" in your keychain

Always allow                                                                                                     Deny          Allow

Regardless of clicking always allow or just allow i get taken back to the login screen, upon some googling apparently its an issue related to keychain on the mac. Previously when i got it to work i had a feeling it could be something to do with keychain thats why the issue arose, but i didnt think much of it because i was just glad to having working again. Only when googling this issue earlier it occurred to me again. Now i don't know if everyone's issue is keychain related too but i think mine is, and it might have something to do on apple's servers but I'm not sure, did you guys have any issues or anything at all with keychain on your devices when iMessage and FaceTime quit working?

And those who managed to get it working, did your solution have anything to do with resetting keychain or anything at all with keychain?

I've never used keychain and my ipad mini is my only Apple device that has any login.

My senior tech called last night to do a test on my ipad but first he wanted me to update to 8.3. It took a while so he's calling back tonight.

8.3 didn't help. Thankfully, so far, nothing else has broken. So as far as I can tell it didn't hurt either.

On a weird note, I noticed (before I went to 8.3) that when I try to reply here using my iPad, sometimes the reply button doesn't work and I have to use something else.

This is a huge disappointment to hear that 8.3 has not resolved this problem.

I honestly didn't think it would. I don't think they know why it's happening.  That's why they are having everyone reset or restore their machines when they call in. For those of us who have tried everything, that doesn't work either. It really seems like the ID database for message and Facetime is corrupted. It lets us get to a certain point (verifying what address we want to use for the app) and then bounces us back to the signin screen.

Just from reading here, it seems a lot of us with this problem have new (in the last 6 months) AppleIDs and/or iPads.

Well if you only have a iPad mini and nothing else than like I thought only some of use or maybe even just me, have the issue being related to keychain. I managee to get on th phone with my senior tech adviser earlier, told him about my thought and he seemed to agree with me. Got me to send a screen shot of the error message i got on the mac and said he would be elevating that up to higher authority to get that figured out and said he'd get in touch again when he gets feedback on that issue

I have a brand new iPad 3 Mini and exactly the same problem as you (I don't use an iPhone either - and certainly won't be considering one now). This product, and Apple service in resolving an issue that seems to have been going on for months, is a real disappointment. I have tried every suggestion everyone has made, and none fix it. It's down to Apple to resolve.

From the posts i am reading on this forum it appears a large number are New iPad Mini 3, i am tempted to go and get a replacement.

If it's not resolved soon my brand new Mini 3 128GB will be going back - and not for a replacement. I see Apple responding to other strings with solutions, but absolutely nothing on this issue.