How to Fix iMessage

[jaymonkey]

I have replaced my NIC Dlink DGE-528T by completely new one - HP NC360T, then generate new S/N and NO result .
Then i switched back to Dlink.Now my NIC has MAC c8:be:19:xx:xx:xx

@jay
Am I right, that you still have no problem with iMessages? According to your theory, you just have to replace your NIC or generate new S/N and you will immediately get this issue. (may be forever, he-he)

Absolutely no problems at all across all my hackingtosh systems (7 desktop and 2 laptop) I am often logged into iMessage on two or three machines at the same time and all send and receive and sync perfectly. I maintain the same S/N and BCD names on all NIC's on all systems no matter what version of OSX.

Cheers
Jay

 

[mrcivic98]

Shiitaki and jaymonkey,

First of all, everyone's help in diagnosing and solving this is really tremendous, so thank you! I do understand the hypothesis regarding the serial number, MAC address and UUID. However, for those of us that did not make any recent changes (i.e., iMessage was working normally, we shut down the computer and the next time we booted it was not working), does that situation fit with the hypothesis? I am a fairly new hackintosh convert, and must admit that I was lucky in that my setup required very little messing with after the initial install, so can't imagine many times that my serial number or mac address have changed -- though I can think of at least two times that the S/N has changed off the top of my head.

 

[3square]

Shiitaki and jaymonkey,

First of all, everyone's help in diagnosing and solving this is really tremendous, so thank you! I do understand the hypothesis regarding the serial number, MAC address and UUID. However, for those of us that did not make any recent changes (i.e., iMessage was working normally, we shut down the computer and the next time we booted it was not working), does that situation fit with the hypothesis? I am a fairly new hackintosh convert, and must admit that I was lucky in that my setup required very little messing with after the initial install, so can't imagine many times that my serial number or mac address have changed -- though I can think of at least two times that the S/N has changed off the top of my head.

agreed, i didn't make any changes in bios or kext related items. iMessage works fine after 10.9.2 update.
I'm still betting it's something on apple server side.

can anyone CONFIRM this? I'm able to make FaceTime AUDIO calls, but once pickup by the other end it disconnect automatically shortly after a few seconds of audio.

FaceTime VIDEO call works as usual.

 

[jaymonkey]

I was lucky in that my setup required very little messing with after the initial install, so can't imagine many times that my serial number or mac address have changed -- though I can think of at least two times that the S/N has changed off the top of my head.

agreed, i didn't make any changes in bios or kext related items. iMessage works fine after 10.9.2 update. I'm still betting it's something on apple server side.

Well i guess it would depend on how long Apple have been storing UUID's (I would think they have been doing so for a long time) and when (if) they introduced a MAC Addr+SN / UUID check and how many times they allow such a miss-match to occur before flagging it in the database ?

If Apple where clever (which they are) they could gain a lot of interesting stats from identifying such mis-matches ? ie - Hackingtosh users v real MAC users ?

I'm not saying that this is the case, just offering a possible explanation and how i see it, it also doesn't mean we cant solve this issue, it just means we got a bit more investigative work to do

Cheers
Jay

 

[carltom46]

For those experiencing the "Your Apple ID can't be used to set up Imessage" error, and subsequently being told to contact support, I just fixed mine by putting a credit card number. I previously had a credit card associated with my Apple account, but recently left that field empty. Re-adding a credit card seems to fix it. The strange thing is that my MacBook Air wasn't experiencing this problem, but from reading the Apple forums, even real Macs can suffer from this strange requirement/bug.

 

[fiftythree]

agreed, i didn't make any changes in bios or kext related items. iMessage works fine after 10.9.2 update.
I'm still betting it's something on apple server side.

can anyone CONFIRM this? I'm able to make FaceTime AUDIO calls, but once pickup by the other end it disconnect automatically shortly after a few seconds of audio.

FaceTime VIDEO call works as usual.

I didn't make any changes as well. It stopped working by itself all of sudden.

I just tried FaceTime audio and it still works here. I talked for a minute and no drop.

 

[Wolfie81]

I can't wait to go home and see if this issue has affected my UP5-TH build. If Apple is collecting/blocking users on such systems, why do it through iMessage. Seems to be a soft way or generally insignificant way of blocking hackintoshes. Why not go full monty and block iTunes/icloud and software updates? While iMessage is pretty cool feature, it isn't vital.

Having said though, I'm a iMessage junky and hope this can be resolved.

 

[Sibi]

Add another to the list. App store and all the other things work fine, but all contacts in iMessage come up red and as "not registered". This started a little while ago and figured maybe it was something with my internet as in the past iMessage randomly stopped working, then started up again a few hours or days later, but I did a clean install and update of Mavericks, and still can't send anything from iMessage.

On a GA-Z77-UP5-TH. Also, iMessage works absolutely fine on my iPhone and iPad.

 

[mhollow]

So, Why don't you change S/N on any of your system and as far as I understand your theory - you'll stuck in this issue with iMessage?

I maintain the same S/N and BCD names on all NIC's on all systems

 

[jaymonkey]

So, Why don't you change S/N on any of your system and as far as I understand your theory - you'll stuck in this issue with iMessage?

Because that is the behaviour of a real mac, nether S/N or LAN MAC address would ever change.

We need to collect more information on systems that are suffering from this recent issue, I think a good start would be comparing the first three octets of MAC address's (the OUI), to see if there is a patten which could be identified against a black or white list on Apple's servers.

Cheers
Jay