Apple ID on El Capitan does not work at all

Just posting this as it may be helpful to others.

I always knew that my MacBook Pro was missing a serial number in About this Mac ever since the logic board got replaced five years ago. That never caused any problem for me. (Except that I wouldn’t be able to use my mobile number to receive messages on my MacBook. But I never used that anyway, so I didn’t bother.)

About two months after upgrading to 10.11.3 I ran into the following problem: I could not log in to the AppStore on my MacBook Pro. When starting apps I purchased on the AppStore I would get the error message that those apps were not purchased on this Mac (which they were). I was prompted to enter the Apple ID and password from the account they’ve been purchased with. After doing so nothing happened, no error message, just nothing. After a couple of tries and even resetting the Apple ID’s password the apps stopped working altogether and even stopped asking for the ID / password.

After contacting Apple Support via phone they suggested to do an Archive Install of the OS … which didn’t help. After my second call to the Apple Support they scheduled an appointment at the local Apple Store the next day. After hooking up my MacBook Pro to their analysis software literally the first thing that popped up was the fact that the serial number is missing. After the Apple Genius entered the serial everything worked fine. Took ten minutes altogether and so far everything seems to be working fine.

tl;dr If your Mac is missing a serial number due to some replaced hardware you need to get it fixed at an Apple Store.

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Worked for me too.....first test input (copy/paste), return, second text input (copy/paste)

Outstanding....thank you

yeah! worked!

Thank you so much! This was such an amazing fix!!!

this worked beautifully for both itunes login and app store!! I got a brand new MacBook Pro in the mail today and it had this login issue off the bat where it would just spin and spin and spin - literally spent hours with the apple staff trying to fix it only for them to tell me it's their server issue. I know it's not that because I can sign in and out just fine on all other apple products - anyway thank you thank you!!!

Thanks so much, this worked for me on my FIRST MacBook Pro i bought and tried to Setup today.

Hopefully Apple will get this fixed ASAP!

As stated above ist my first MacBook Pro. Many years ago i had a mac mini, and now i wanted to Switch from Windows Laptop (which has many issues) to mac, so i have to say I'm little bit disappointed about this issue an first start and Setup of new MBPR.

Thanks aPenguin this worked out for me. You saved me a lot of pain !!

I'm simply stunned that this issue is still going on (thread started in 2015) because the only solution given to me when I "lost" my photos upgrading from 10.6.8 to 10.10.01 on my 2010 MBP was to go to El Capitan (which would install Photos, replacing the defunct iPhoto). (the 10.00.03 updater refused to recognize my machine).

Since upgrading to El Capitan EVERYTHING associated with AppleID (App Store, messages, iTunes) does not recognize my apple ID. Obviously it still works because I'm here, and I can sign on iCloud with a browser, but that's it. To make a long story short, spent a lot of time with an Apple Specialist Supervisor gathering logs, screen shots, etc, but in the end he said it was a "known bug" and that engineers are working on it. Wow, like I said, this thread starts in 2015 and this "known bug" keeps people from BUYING stuff in the App store, you'd think they'd have a patch by now! He said he is turning it (back) over to engineers (2nd try to fix this). I can't go back to Yose because I have no Time Machine back up, this was a secondary machine, which needs to be El Capitan for my new iPhone SE to link to. UNACCEPTABLE to have this bug so long, especially because it is costing Apple real money in lost revenue.

My serial number is fine, BTW, not a refurb.

Thank you merci beaucoup grazie mille!!! After upgrading to OS 10.11 (iMac mid 2007) i couldn't log in to iTune/Apple Store/ iCloud/Messages. I was on the phone for hours with Apple "experts" ... jumping through hoops ... they clearly had no idea what was wrong and were just trying out one thing after another ... I loathe and detest all the footeling around trying to solve a simple problem ... life is so short ... am still puzzled by their lack of interest in a money-losing (for them — I buy a fair number of movies and records) bug ... your solution -- boot the machine in "safe" mode and then sign in -- is so elegant in its simplicity ... worked like a charm.

Thanks for posting this. I've been trying to do updates and cannot login to the Apple store during the process. I have 2 accounts that I know to be working as I've logged into both of them from Safari. Neither works. I haven't try to buy anything but I would like the latest updates.

Sigh....

This worked for me, when no other recommendations did. So strange....Thanks so much!

Ok, so i had this issue after updating to elcapitan as well, also i could not log into ANY internet account and my keychain wasnt working correctly. I tried everything, deleting plists, changing permissions, the works. I finally found a solution and hopefully this will work for everyone. I found a command under system>library>internetaccounts>internetaccountmigrator. all you need to do is click on this, it will run a command in terminal, i think you will need to enter the admin pw, and boom.... it will show a readout of what it did, mine cleared out a bunch of expired sessions and then i was able to log into icloud under system preferences > internet accounts. Once logged into icloud, i was able to log into all of my other accounts, and my keychain was once again working. I believe this is because I had my settings configured to have icloud back up my internet accounts and keychain, whatever it was, it worked.

no such luck 😟

I have this problem on my computer for both messages and the app store. this fix only worked for the appstore, how can i do it on messages?