iMessage and FaceTime unable to sign in (IOS 9)

I Updated both my phone and iPad and could not get my iPad to accept my appleID .. Tried all the usual stuff...FINALLY after 3 days of not accessing iPad messages.. I went to iPhone turned Off iMessage, waited and turned it back on and reentered my appleID, and went to iPad and entered appleID ... It took!

i did that method too and now i have my iPad offer Update to iOS9.1

but i plugged iPad into iTunes on Mac, to restore it, and the iTunes says that my iPad is already iOS9.2!!!

here are screenshots of my settings in iPad and on the Mac in iTunes

In iPad Air 2

And the same iPad Air 2, viewed in iTunes on iMac 27 in El Capitan

and here when i let iTunes check for new version

From my Experience, in truth, iCloud Drive has been faulty since they first introduced it with iOS8, and it hasn't been fixed, because they cant fix it.. its too entangled. In my Opinion, the longer time passes since the death of Steve Jobbs, the more Apple makes a Mess of things

Steve Jobbs would have made Macbook touchscreen and it would be the number one device in the world still.. but it isnt anymore, because Windows (i dont like Windows OS) has done it with the surface pro and the surface book. Apple's greed for device sales (macbook AND IPAD) and their fear that a touchscreen macbook would reduce iPad sales (it wouldn't though, because iPad is smaller and still has a different use reason), has caused the Macbook and Macbook Air, to become old hat because they don't have a touchscreen. iPad pro wont work like a full OS, and webmasters like me cannot use the iPad browser to create content with online, only desktop os can do that.

Anyway i also cant sign in to iMessage, the 'find friends' app solution doesnt work because it used my secondary iMessage email address instead of my Apple id to sign in, whereas iMessage requires me to use Apple id to sign in before i can add that very same second address which is seen in find friends

Apart from this, my version of iOs is iOs? the new mystery boob iOS.. its both 9.01, and 9.2

Great stuff Apple my iPad is ruined

and so are 5 million others judging from how many people have clicked "i have the same question' and from the fact that all my friends who use iOS are also ripping their hair out trying to log in

Listening to Steve Cooke bragging about iOS9 in the Keynote is a very angering thing, because he is blind to the bugs, blind to our needs, deaf to our requests, and proud as the emperor with no clothes. That wont keep Apple at the top, and neither will this version of iOS

But for me the biggest setback Apple have brought upon themselves, is the refusal to make Macbook touchscreen. Now surface pro 4 and surface book are taking the sales, and are considered even by Apple freaks like me, to be the superior hardware

Its the firts time in History that a Windows pc or ultrabook or mobile was superior to a macbook

Its also the first time in History that i see Apple emulate Android Functionalities too.

They have run out of innovation, because the original Innovative brain, has passed on to the next world. R.I.P. Steve Jobbs

Using iPhone 5c and recently installed ios 9.1 for the 2nd time -- I had rolled back to 8.4 after installing 9.0 because of the iMessage issue.

With 8.4 I constantly had iMessage turning itself off and I couldn't get it to slide to "on", but it worked half the time (after toggling the wifi endless times). Now, iMessage *never* works - it refuses to sign in ("cannot contact server for activation. try again').

When I first installed 9.1 everything worked for about a day. Now nothing will work to get imessage to sign in.

I have tried every single option suggested, including the factory restore/reset -- that only worked temporarily. Most of the suggestions either didn't work for me or worked only once -- then the iphone signed itself out, and won't go back in.

--Logging out of icloud and then back in worked once -- and hasn't worked since

--Factory reset worked once, and then it stopped working -- be aware that (unless something has changed), if you do a reset, you'll probably lose your 8.4 wallpaper -- Apple took out a lot of the wallpapers, including the one I used (night sky with stars) -- this was what really forced me to roll back to 8.4 the first time.

At this point I'm going to roll back to 8.4 permanently if I still can. I used to be a huge Apple supporter, but after all this I really despise iMessages and ios.

My only "solution" has been to use alternatives like a google voice # or whatsapp instead and to tell people to not text my cell #. This situation with imessages is absurd.

This is exactly what happened to me. The Genius bar replaced my phone today; if iMessage isn't up & running in 24 hours I'll be going back.

Good luck...

looks like Apples quality control died with Steve Jobs. Seriosly quality has taken a dive, bugs have increased and fixes are incredibly slow getting released. This is nearly enough to send me back to Microsoft

Hi, it's just as easy to fix this issue. All you got to do is the following:

1- Be sure to be logged out of iMessage and FaceTime, then, log out of iCloud on your iPhone/iPad/iPod

2- Turn off the device, then, turn it on, and do the following, in order:

3- Go to Settings->Messages->Log in using your iCloud account (it may take a few minutes so just wait)

3- Go back to Settings->FaceTime->Log in using your iCloud account (same here, it may take a few minutes so wait)

6- Go back to Settings->iCloud->Log in using your iCloud account

4- There you go! Now you have enabled iMessage and FaceTime!

Hope this helped! 🙂

Thanks for the post! I wasn't able to follow the exact procedure as the login to Messaging after power on failed. I had to login to the cloud, then I could login to message. Apparently the real key is logging off and then powering the system off.

So thanks for the post, I was able to resolve the problem.

Still, this should not have happened in the first place or Apple should have provided some instructions to deal with issues like this as part of their release notes for the update that caused the problem.

Lets hope we get some Quality in Apple "QA"!

yeah that's a very annoying issue, and should be fixed by Apple... 😕

Factory reset (using iTunes) also worked for me -- at first I got the same error, but then some switching off/on fixed it...

I just got an update this week and the same thing happened again. At least this works...

Genuis Caseysnyder!!!!!

You have saved Christmas Day,

My daughters iphone 5s was working fine.... upgreded iOS and facetime/imessage stopped working.........tears etc.....

You saved the day

Cheers!!

TThank you Casey this worked for me - but I had to reboot after resetting the setting then I was able to sign in thanks for saving what little sanity I had left

Thank you so much this has worked for me too.

Sandra

Thanks Casey. That fixed it for me. Note to others, if this does not fix it for you, try a reboot after this fix. Some folks seemed to have to do that.

unkn0wnvariable wrote:

Anyway I decided to see if I could log in using my primary @me.com ID address instead of my alternate @icloud.com one and that worked, I didn't even have to disable 2 factor or generate an app password.

This solved the problem for me – thank you. My Apple ID was originally a @mac.com address. The Apple ID site says that my @me.com and @iCloud.com addresses are aliases of my @mac.com dress. Using my @iCloud.com address, I was getting the "error with activation" message and tried all other suggestions, but it worked right away when I signed in using my original @mac.com address.