How to Fix iMessage

[spang1974]

I cannot thank the people who have worked on this guide enough. The steps detailed have worked for me every time that I have made a mistake which has broken iMessage, and FaceTime. I reccomend taking your time, and following the steps as close as you can. Don't attempt when you have had a drink or two, no good ever comes of it I have had to change my apple id password a couple of times, but we should all be doing that regularly anyways.

A big Thank you to everyone who has ever worked to get iMessage and FaceTime working!!

Spang1974

 

[rad-we]

Nothing to do with SM Profile used, you can override hardware sleep behaviour using the darkwake kernel flag, i'm using darkwake=8 which seems to work well for me.

I wasn't able to find any documentation on that flag. Could you give me a link?
thanks

Edit: do you mean darkwake=0 or really darkwake=8?

 

[Wolfie81]

I just want to say to everyone that DOES have iMessage running perfectly, I URGE YOU ALL to copy/duplicate the entire 'Extra' folder and store it away on another disk or in the cloud. This has made my life easier for reinstalling when required and kills many birds with one stone.

 

[zamdam]

What should my System Type ID be? I currently have it set to iMac13,2. iMessages gives me the error, problem during activation.. Although it works on my macbook and iPad and iPhone.. my apple id is verified and my Nic is at en0. Although i am using an ASUS usb-n53 wifi adapter for internet.

Any guesses>?

Thanks

 

[jaymonkey]

What should my System Type ID be? I currently have it set to iMac13,2. iMessages gives me the error, problem during activation.. Although it works on my macbook and iPad and iPhone.. my apple id is verified and my Nic is at en0. Although i am using an ASUS usb-n53 wifi adapter for internet.

@zamdam,

As long as your system is stable I personally would stick with iMac 13,1 or 2. I assume your system is the spec in your signature ?, if so I have several Z77 based systems all using iMac 13,1. Its very unlikely that your iMessage issue is related to the System Type ID.

Have you worked through the main guide ?

Cheers
Jay

 

[jaymonkey]

iMessage/AppleID MAC address issue ?

To all following this thread ...

I thought it important to share a bit of information on a iMessage issue I hit the other day which unless anyone can offer an alternative explanation for, helps to confirm my supposition that Apple are indeed using the MAC address as part of their device miss-match check as detailed in my theory at the start of Part 2 of my guide.

Last week i upgraded one of my Gigabyte OSX systems, the original spec was based around these key components:-

• Gigabyte GA-H77N-WiFi Motherboard
• Intel i3 Ivy Bridge 3225 CPU
• Azurewave AW-CE123H Wifi/BT Combo mPCI card

The above system has been running OSX 10.9.2/10/9.3 for the last six months with no issues what so ever including iMessage/iCloud/iTunes/App Store ...

I've been using this system for some design work using SketchUp for quite a while and decided that the time was right for a bump in performance ... so i decided to update the Motherboard and CPU to the following:-

• Gigabyte GA-Z87N-WiFi Motherboard
• Intel i5 Haswell 4670 CPU

I should point out that I have built many systems around the H & Z - 77/87 Gigabyte ITX motherboards and in all cases all components were new and no issues where experienced with iMessage (based around the methods in my guide).

However with this build i reused the Azurewave WiFi card from the previous build, OSX installed without any issues using the standard Chimera 3.0.1/FileNVRAM V1.1.3 method. As in all cases with a new build i used Chameleon Wizard to set the System Type to iMac13,1 and generate a new random Serial Number. Since it was a brand new mobo that i've used before i knew system UUID would be fine as this board does not suffer from the SID Bios bug (see Part 2 of the guide).

Once OSX was up and running i did all my usual checks to make sure that all uuid's where correct, checked 'nvram.uuid.plist' ... etc everything looked good so I went on and logged into iTunes, then Appstore, and finally the iCloud with no problems, running iMessage i was able to login in but my contacts were in red text so right away i knew something was different about this build. I checked everything again as detailed in my guide, all was correct. I did a nvram reset, generated new S/N but iMessage still failed.

Running iMessage debug showed that all key values where correct.

Knowing this was a new build except for WiFi combo card and armed with all the knowledge I have gained from writing the guide and monitoring this thread I've come to the conclusion that the MAC address used by a device to access/register with the iMessage system for the first time must also be associated with the UUID & S/N lockout methods used by Apple.

To prove the theory i generated a new S/N delated nvram.uuid.plist and reset my iMessage system using the method detailed in Part-1, Step 4 of the guide. Then I powered down and replaced the Azurewave WiFi combo card with a new one ( I always have a few of these in stock as they are a great card for hacks, see my guide here for more info). I booted OSX with the -f flag. As always i first logged into iCloud, iTunes & App Store and all worked fine and this time iMessage logged straight in and worked 1st time.

What to make of the above ... ?

I know from experience that if i had logged into iMessage using one of the on-board Ethernet LAN ports rather than the re-cycled WiFi combo card that it would have worked, but because i used the re-cycled WiFi card who's MAC address has already been associated with another Apple device's S/N and/or UUID iMessage it did not work.

I've noticed that a number of recent posters/users have been using a USB based WiFi NIC so i'm guessing the above experience would apply to those users ?

In this instance no amount of changing the S/N and or SM UUID would help ..... what needs to be changed is the MAC address, some NIC devices do allow this via their firmware/setup if not anther possibility is to use the the nvram injection method as detailed by @Heryts in previous posts ... If your SM-UUID is ok then you should only need to inject a new/random MAC address.

I will follow up on this and eventually update the guide with more conclusive information, however as always I would be interested to hear from any users who may have experienced something similar (using same MAC address on new hardware)

Cheers
Jay

 

[jaymonkey]

I wasn't able to find any documentation on that flag. Could you give me a link?
thanks

Edit: do you mean darkwake=0 or really darkwake=8?

@rad-we,

Many people think that darkwake is a simple on/off (0/1) flag but it is much more complex, the value of the darkwake parameter is made up of a number of bits relating to certain hardware sleep options. In order to understand it you need to understand the code that makes up that part of OSX. I did my own research on it but if you use google you will find it discussed on various forums.

But a good introduction/overview can be found posted by @NeXTguy here.

It all depends on what hardware you have and to what level that hardware is supported, some users use darkwake=9, also 11 seems a popular value.

Cheers
Jay

 

[surroundedbytrees]

Thought I would post my experience with getting iMessage to work

Followed all the steps as posted here....in the end was getting the Contact Apple and the 12 digit code.

Called Apple and they indeed fixed it. The call was escalated to someone (i forget the dept)

Anyway this person had me log into applied.apple.com and provide them with a Temporary PIN (located near the bottom on the left side)

I told him I was using a Hack....he said he was supporting the SW not the HW (i sensed a polite wink - wink ).

He did something on his end that seemed to resolve the issue.

One thing I did notice during this is that because I had 2 step verification on my account, when i logged into applied.apple.com it sent a SMS to my iPhone which I confirmed on the Hack....it was following this that iMessage worked (I'll never know if it was this verification or something the rep did although I'm inclined to believe he did something on his end because he did require the 12 digit code displayed during the initial iMessage error)

As is quite normal with any call to Apple support it was a fantastic experience.

Granted I own a iPhone and iPad so I have a legit iMessage account (but then I imagine most people have at least one legit device)

MB GA Z68X-UD3H-B3 (1.3) - Builtin Eth0
OS X 10.9.4
MacBook Pro 9,2

 

[zamdam]

@zamdam,

As long as your system is stable I personally would stick with iMac 13,1 or 2. I assume your system is the spec in your signature ?, if so I have several Z77 based systems all using iMac 13,1. Its very unlikely that your iMessage issue is related to the System Type ID.

Have you worked through the main guide ?

Cheers
Jay

Yes, i worked through the guide. I was able to sign into iMessages, but when it actually opens and i go to preferences, I'm not logged in. Jabber works.

When i try to login it says "An error occurred during activation. Try again."

Thanks for the reply

 

[jaymonkey]

Yes, i worked through the guide. I was able to sign into iMessages, but when it actually opens and i go to preferences, I'm not logged in. Jabber works.

When i try to login it says "An error occurred during activation. Try again."

Thanks for the reply

I notice you have ASRock Z77 Mobo, I think this was one of the motherboards that suffers from the SID Bug, Have you checked your SM UUID ? - read Part 2 of the guide carefully, perform the checks, if it looks like you are suffering from a invalid uuid then perform the appropriate injection method.

Cheers
Jay