Apple ID on El Capitan does not work at all

I also with in a day or two of upgrading to El Capitan was locked out of my Macbook. My iPad and iPhone worked fine. I was able to reset my AppleID Password via my iPhone and then able to use my El Capitan Macbook Pro again. The one glitch that persists is that iTunes jumps up and down daily asking me to reenter the appleID into it.

As I suggested. Try creating a new user on your El Capitan installed computer. Give admin capabilities. Log out of your usual user, login to new admin user, and after booted up, Log into iTunes, using the same apple ID that you typically use to login to iTunes, iCloud, etc... If you login with new computer admin user, but with your Apple ID, then the problem is the regular user profile.

I did this, then I logged out of the new admin user, and restarted my machine in safe mode. While booted in safe mode, logged back in under my normal user profile, I logged in to iTunes, iCloud, message, etc with my ONLY apple ID. No problem, Then reboot in regular boot mode, and then you should be able to login to iTunes, iCloud, etc.. with your one and ONLY apple ID

A couple of suggestions:

1) Delete the files located in main user/library/application support/icloud/accounts

2) Shut down the computer for 10-15 seconds. Then startup holding the "command" "option" "P" and "R" keys. Let the computer bong 2 times, then release the keys. This will reset the NVRAM. Then press the "shift" key while booting up. (safe boot)

3) Login with your main user under safe boot

4) Try to login with your usual apple ID

Are you using time machine?

I did steps 1-4. Issue persists. I am using time machine. I restored my machine. The first thing it asked me to do was sign into iCloud.

Spinning gear, hard restart, same old problem.

I may try to go back to Yosemite. Think it would fix it?

Gail, I believe our situations our identical. My Apple ID also works on the apple.com website, other computers, etc., however not for the App Store on my computer, or iTunes store. I downloaded El Capitan the night before the issue arose. Now when I try to access those stores, there is no error message, just the spinning wheel indefinitely or until I force quit. I've tried the solutions offered on this thread, but unfortunately it's still not fixed.

I may try re-installing El Capitan, however if anyone finds a solution to this issue, please do share.

Thanks

Thanks for the help here, I suffered the same issue:

Upgraded to El Capitan to hopefully fix some Yosemite issue including Wifi and Bluetooth drop outs. This did work for me. However soon after I was asked to change my AppleId password because it was too weak (?) and after this I was no longer able to login to my iCloud from either my MBP or iMac (both upgraded to El Capitan). I either received an "unknown error" or the login timed out.

Creating a new admin account, logging into that and logging into iCloud from that account worked. I changed back to my regular account and I can now log into iCloud.

p.s. is anyone else getting sick of Apple releasing buggy software to the quality level of Microsoft back in the mid-2000's? That's why I changed to Mac in the first place! Now everyone seems to expect the next OSX release to be buggy so they wait 0 just as we used to do with Windows.

yup, the main reason I've changed to mac and other apple products back in 2006 is the quality level of the software and minimum buggy apps compare to its competitor. Expecting the "ready-to-use" device since the first use of mac and it continues until 2015. This is quite simple-but-major issue for me as a life-with-mac-user. I've bought tons of music from itunes, many apps from app store for work. And The Capitan seems don't give any shh about this.

And now, its all gone just by clicking "update el capitan". Why wouldnt you back to cats ?

this is really frustrating.

Just wanted to let everyone know that indeed the hardware serial number was my issue. I took it to a nearby Apple store and it took them 10 minutes to enter that information in my computer's system (it's not something that most people are capable of doing themselves). After this fix, I'm able to log-in to the App Store, iTunes store, no problem with my Apple ID. No more spinning wheel.

Hi, I had the same problem with my 2013 Mac Pro, up until El captain, no problem but after the update I had the same issue signing in to pretty much anything apple related, the App store being the biggest problem which just hanged with the spinning beachball until it was force quitted.

Turns out like others have mention my serial number which is stamped on to the chassis hadn't been programmed onto the logic board, meaning my Mac effectively didn't have one and the latest OSX requires a serial number authentication when signing in to iCloud, iMessage etc, it actually say this on the apple support site. So my only option was to roll back to Yosemite using the time machine until I could find a solution.

Most Macs should have the serial number already programmed, click on the apple logo top left of your screen, click 'about my mac' and it should be displayed at the bottom of the list, if it says 'unavailable' or something similar than this is almost certainly the cause of your sign in problems. The reason for a missing serial number can be a number of reasons but mainly if you've had your logic board replaced and the technician forgot to serialise it, same thing in my case with my Mac pro which was built to order.

If your Mac is pre 2013 check out this site http://rogersm.net/icloud-problems-mountain-lion-serial-number and search around for a dmg file which you can input it on your own (follow the instructions perfectly as it's a one time only deal, mess it up and and your problems increase 10 fold!) but looking at the comments section it looks mostly positive.

Unfortunately it seems that if your Mac is post 2013 then like myself an apple store is your only solution as the machine needs to be connected to one of apples servers to be serialised or so I was told, anyhow it only took 5 minutes and the staff were great (London branch)

Hope this helps.

I had the exact same problem with a very simple fix (I tried some of the other ones listed here first so I don't know if this will work right away).

For me, instead of logging in through iCloud in system preferences, I selected Internet Accounts (right next to iCloud in system preferences). You can enter you iCloud password on this screen and it accepted it first try for me. I then opened the iCloud preferences and I was already logged in (I did not have to enter my password again). I hope the fix is this easy for everyone else.

For the record, before finding this solution, I had tried deleting my iCloud files from the account support folder, and I had started in Safe Mode and logged in individually to iTunes, App Store and Messages.

FYI. This didn't solve the issue for me.

To recap,

1) I CAN see my Serial Number in "about this mac".

2) My login to iCloud and iTunes hangs when I try to login. If I provide a bad password, it will tell me right away, but it hangs with the proper Password.

3) I tried to change my password but that didn't help.

4) still Frustrated!!!

An update on my situation...

I scheduled an appointment at the Genius Bar yesterday. The first person to help me had me login to iCloud.com and she saw that my account wasn't validated and quickly turfed me to some other person. I validated my account while I waited for the second person to show up (I had 2-factor auth setup).

The second person started in with the usual stuff. He tried to run permission checks on the disk drive, but couldn't find where to do that in El Capitan - so gave up. He then asked me to disable 2-factor authentication on my iCloud account. Did that, it didn't help. He then deleted my key chain files (or copied to a different location). After restart, things still didn't work. As a reminder, I can see my Serial Number in "about this mac". The guy talked to several others behind the Genius Bar and finally said that I should call Apple Support directly.

I was desperate to get past this issue and didn't want to spend hours on the phone so I asked if I could do a clean install of El Capitan. He helped me load an image of El Capitan while in the store (which was very fast). I then went home and finished the setup and restored all my files from a Time Machine backup taken the previous day.

I hated to do the clean install, but things are now working. One weird thing... After the reinstall, I then upgraded to 10.11.1. During that process, my machine wouldn't reboot correctly. It would start, then sit there and ding,ding, ding, continuously on the restart screen. This also happened during the original install of El Capitan. I needed to reset the smc and pram to get things working.

This is a very ugly experience for a product billed as being well polished.

Hi kdh05,

thank you for your report. I have the same trouble with my MacBook Pro, have tried many things but nothing helped.

Finally you do a clean install, and then restore all files from time-machine.

Can you please give me a hint how i can restore ALL files from time-machine and at the same time keep the OS install?

Do you just restore your User Folder?

I would like to go the same way.

Rgds Roland