OK. I'm stuck. FaceTime has always worked for me in the past, and iMessage has usually worked, though it's been a bit spotty. I've never done anything special (beyond the hoops you have to jump through to get the OS installed) to get either to work, but now neither work.
System:
2012 build, Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP5-TH, Intel i7, Apple WiFi/BT card, GTX 1070, nVIDIA web drivers
Clover bootloader v4842 (can't update without breaking everything)
iMac 14,2 system definition
OS:
macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 (can't update to 10.14 or later due to lack of graphics drivers)
A month or so ago, I installed an Apple security update which wreaked havoc on my system. The WiFi driver stopped loading, the computer wouldn't ever go to sleep or stay shut down (holding power button for 10s was only way to keep it shut down), and FaceTime & iMessage stopped working. Today, I upgraded Clover which broke everything so I restored the backup of the EFI partition (restoring the previous version of Clover) and that magically fixed all the problems except for iMessage and FaceTime.
So, I followed several guides laying around the internet that suggest many of the same things as here and then I went through what is here as well and have gotten nowhere.
I have:
- nuked the /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration files & restarted
- verified that the en0 (ethernet) network interface is indeed listed as builtin (the en1 (WiFi) interface is not & I can't figure out how to make it builtin with Clover, but from what I see in this thread, only one interface needs to be listed as builtin)
- signed out of iCloud
- nuked all the iMessage related ~/Library/Caches and ~/Library/Preferences files & restarted
- installed EmuVariableUefi kext (already had OsxAptioFix3Drv kext - required for me to boot) & restarted
- changed my Apple ID password
- as recommended a few posts above, Generated new values for:
- System Parameters Custom UUID
- Serial Number (and Board Serial Number)
- SmUUID
- ROM
- verified the Serial Number generated above is not valid
- run the iMessageDebug command line tool to verify Hardware UUID =/= System-ID & that all other values looked reasonable
- Note: One guide I read said that the BoardSerialNumber should start with the same 12 digits as the regular Serial Number & then have 5 random digits after it. I tried this previously but when I recently regenerated the values above I did not do this so the BoardSerialNumber that CloverConfigurator generated when I made a new Serial Number is completely different from the new Serial Number
I'm sure you're wondering what error message I'm seeing. That's just it. I get no error message. It just never logs in.
iCloud works. I can sign into and out of iCloud in System Preferences. But I can't sign in to iMessage or FaceTime. Signing into iCloud takes a really long time — like 4-5x longer than it takes on my MacBook Pro — but it works.
After I regenerated the Serial Number & related values, restarted, and went to sign in to iMessage, I got the typical 2FA stuff that you get when signing in to a new device. I had to approve the sign in from my MacBook Pro but from there the login proceeded as before - it just greys out the username and password fields for awhile while it tries to log in, and when it silently fails they just go back to being normal. No error message. Nothing.
FaceTime is similar. After entering the username and password it just goes to a spinning gear and never goes anywhere. I've left it there for over a half hour and the gear was still spinning…
So… what am I missing? As far as I can tell everything checks out. Did Apple introduce something in this most recent security update (I think it was in Nov or early Dec but I've been too busy to try to fix things until now) that broke existing fixes? I don't see anyone else with this problem so is it isolated to 10.13 and everyone who's updated can still use iMessage and FaceTime just fine?