iMessage problem on El Capitan

Howdy frankthewanderer,

I agree iMessage is really a handy way to communicate. I understand your now can't sign in as if you have network issues. I gather all other network activity is fine.

Please check out

Get help signing in to Messages, FaceTime, and Game Center - Apple Support

Note some of the symptoms addressed matches what you are seeing.

Best regards.

Hi frankthewanderer,

Thank you for using the Apple Support Community. Due to the nature of your issue or question you may find more information by using another one of Apple's support resources - https://getsupport.apple.com/GetproductgroupList.action.

Take care.

I spent 2 hours with Apple support yesterday. Even a clean install, test account, etc didn't work. I'm at least glad to see I'm not alone on this one. I've tried most everything in these posts as well as some things Apple Support wanted me to try. I'm going to follow a couple of threads here and hopefully something will get solved.

I'm going to use another drive and reinstall a clean version of Yosemite just to make sure it's nothing with my mac (But I don't think so).

Steve

So I've just got it working again, after days of messing with it. This is what I did.

I have the luxury of a Mac Pro, with multiple drives...

1. On the El Capitan system go to System Preferences > Sharing and see what your Mac is called. I think this is important.

2. Put a fresh clean install of the Yosemite OS on one of the drives.

2. Create a test account, like Apple Support suggested I do yesterday.

3. When it asks if you want to log into iCloud Say No, and create your test login.

4. After you are totally logged in, go to System Preferences and Name the MAC the same as what it is in El Capitan.

5. Open the iMessage Application. Enter your Apple ID and Password.

5. It will of course work.

6. Logoff Messages, I did it from the Preferences menu.

7. Quit Messages

8. Boot into EL Capitan

9. Login

9. Go to sharing and make sure one last time the Name of the machine matched what you saw in the old Yosemite OS.

10. Go Start messages and you'll get the opening login screen.

11. Login, if you're as lucky as I was it will start right away, then you can go to your iPhone and set up the transfer of SMS messages too.

So why did I try all this? I looked at my iPhone this morning and saw a bunch of different machine names for rmy MacPro. When Apple had me reinstall with a test user it called my machine "test's Mac Pro" and that name is in my iPhone, along with about 5 others that I used when I kept trying reinstalls of the new OS to try to fix it. I was also a Beta tester, and had that users name in there as "Stephen's Mac Pro"

The real name of my Mac Pro has always been "KDS Mac Pro", so I don't know exactly what in this list actually fixed the problem, but I really think it's security/protection related and somehow linked with the sharing/machine name.

I'm going to reboot now to see if that breaks it again. I'll post back

Steve

I have exactly the same problem: ever since I installed El Capitan, I'm unable to log into my iMessage account.

I didn't understood what to do to solve the problem, though. And I can certainly not install a clean copy of Yosemite

on an empty drive, for once I have no empty drive, and for second I don't know where to find Yosemite.

Shouldn't Apple rather fix this problem, since obviously many people encounter it?

Thanks in advance for any advice

From the errors given, it sounds like it's about setting the NVRAM. Clear the NVRAM (previously referred to as PRAM; reboot holding command-option-P-R until you hear a second chime) and see if the problem works itself out.

I had this problem this morning and this fixed it and a couple other problems such as trying to restart into my boot camp drive.

Messages – Can’t log in

ausgemiwky

thank you! this fixed my problem perfectly in much fewer steps

This problem was driving me out of my mind. I finally realized, after 6 hours trying to fix it, that my VPN was on. I use "SmartVPN" from VPNUK. Messages started forwarding my messages to my Mac immediately. I had to dismiss the dozen or so validation codes first, though.

Hello ausgemiwyk,

thanx A LOT, it worked! 🙂