How to Fix iMessage

[lebleu29]

For the record, you don't need genuine numbers for iMessage right now. This guide I wrote should help. The current guide is a little messy for me so I wrote one I thought I could share.

Thanks for your help, but I've tried that method several times on my current hack and it doesn't work for me. It did work for a different machine I made a few months ago.

Hence me buying the old Macbook.

 

[lazarus]

Thanks for your help, but I've tried that method several times on my current hack and it doesn't work for me. It did work for a different machine I made a few months ago.

Hence me buying the old Macbook.

What is the old Macbook? Is it capable of running Lion/Mountain Lion? I tried using DarwinDumper on the Mac mini I have and it would not reveal the MLB. It always shows it as PVT and aa value of 1. Currently working on using MacPostFactor to install Mountain Lion on it. Hopefully that will let me log in to Messages and then get the MLB and ROM. I think part of the problem is that old hardware doesn't have a 64bit EFI. So I'm not really sure if my little plan is going to work or not. We'll see.

 

[Amble]

I'm having a problem with SmUUID. I'm using latest Clover, I have followed this guide and everything else works except on the profiler, the hardware UUID is always different than the one on the config.plist. I used uuidgen to get the SmUUID. I have deleted everything from config.plist RtVariables section. What am I missing?

 

[lazarus]

Thanks for your help, but I've tried that method several times on my current hack and it doesn't work for me. It did work for a different machine I made a few months ago.

Hence me buying the old Macbook.

So here's an interesting development, but not really progress. As I mentioned, I bought an old Mac mini 1,1 core solo main logic board for like $30 on eBay. Upgraded it to a C2D processor and threw in some more RAM. Installed Mountain Lion on an external USB HD via MacPostFactor. It seems to run fine. As with my Hackintosh, I can log in to Messages fine on my account, my wife's account generates a validation code.

Called Apple, gave them the serial of the mini, they didn't bat an eyelash at the fact that this thing shouldn't even be able to run Mountain Lion. Gave them the customer code, they approved it no problem... and nothing. Just like on my hack, despite it all appearing clear on their end the validation never comes through. I was very honest with them, that this was an eBay reclamation project, and asked if that could be affecting things. They said they really didn't think so, that if I had the software running, it should be able to be validated. They're stumped for now. May get sent to an engineer instead of a support person. They never even see the Mac Mini showing up. On their end when a system has not been approved it shows as "challenged". The Mini never gets that far, but my hack did.

Interestingly, when I run iMessagedebug on it it cannot give a system ID (not sure why, may be a side effect of MacPostFactor?). 13 digit MLB, ROM is firewire MAC address. When I plug those MLB and ROM numbers in to Clover and generate an SmUUID it still doesn't work, but I get the exact same validation code, so it appears having one vs not having one has nothing to do with what they are seeing. No resolution yet, but hopefully with actual Apple hardware (antiquated, but legit) I can push this far enough to get some answers that may help.

 

[lebleu29]

Very interested to see how this turns out. Do you think it's worth it for me to try and install Mountain Lion on my Macbook 4.1 via MacPostFactor?

 

[Amble]

Yup. Welcome to our world. If you are getting this, and getting the same customer code every single time, you can call Apple. Read the last chapter of the guide in post 1 on how to go about that.

But that said, even though they have unblocked it for a lot of us, it still won't log in and gives the same customer code every time. For SOME accounts, and I can't figure which ones, you have to get your ROM/MLB combo whitelisted, and I THINK there is an additional check to make sure they are a valid combination. So for some accounts the random digits added to serial to make an MLB won't work. But no one at this time really knows what that MLB should be formatted as. The best discussion on that is probably this one at Insanelymac. My current best theory is for newer iCloud accounts, you need a valid MLB/ROM combo (ie properly formatted, so that it COULD be an authentic Apple MLB/ROM even though it doesn't yet exist in their system) that has been whitelisted by Apple. What it takes to make that valid combo is still unclear.

I wonder if I might be having this problem? I have everything set up as in the guide and have checked every value again and again, iMessage debug has all values the same after reboots. Once I got everything right I reinstalled 10.11 just incase and then called Apple. They asked for the serial put me on hold, asked serial again to check if it's right then asked the customer code and again put me on hold. They said it should work now, asked me to restart iMessage and log in, but still the same problem, again they put me on hold and then asked to try log in again but still got the same error and customer code. This wen't almost an hour and then they said they have no idea why it isn't workin. They said that an engineer will need to solve this and he/she will contact me later.

 

[lazarus]

Very interested to see how this turns out. Do you think it's worth it for me to try and install Mountain Lion on my Macbook 4.1 via MacPostFactor?

I don't think it can possibly hurt at this point. Actually that computer should support Lion. Try installing Lion and see if the beta Messages.app will work for you. If it does, you should (I think) be able to import the MLB and ROM to your hack and have it work there as well. Although I'm not 100% on how the beta Messages works with regards to the final version, but I assume it uses similar checks on Apple's end.

 

[lazarus]

I wonder if I might be having this problem? I have everything set up as in the guide and have checked every value again and again, iMessage debug has all values the same after reboots. Once I got everything right I reinstalled 10.11 just incase and then called Apple. They asked for the serial put me on hold, asked serial again to check if it's right then asked the customer code and again put me on hold. They said it should work now, asked me to restart iMessage and log in, but still the same problem, again they put me on hold and then asked to try log in again but still got the same error and customer code. This wen't almost an hour and then they said they have no idea why it isn't workin. They said that an engineer will need to solve this and he/she will contact me later.

Let us know what they tell you. I had a technical rep mention sending the case to an engineer, but it never happened.

 

[Amble]

Let us know what they tell you. I had a technical rep mention sending the case to an engineer, but it never happened.

I tried to login this morning at it works I don't know if an engineer fixed it, if they did it was fast as I called around 6 PM yesterday and it worked 9 AM today.

 

[eszcrew]

Hi all,

i have strange problem with iMessage on El Capitan 10.11.2: I can only received messages (copy 1:1 on my iphone ios 9.2.1) from it but cannot send any even contact is blue. Any advice?