iMessage broken after Catalina update

[Filouman]

iMessage was working fine until I updated to 10.15 yesterday, now getting the "An error occurred during activation. Try again." message when trying to sign in.

Seem to remember having the same problem after Mojave upgrade, but was able to quickly get it working again. This time around, I have tried all the usual trouble-shooting, signing out of iCloud, deleting preferences, removing keychain auth tokens, etc... Nothing seems to work. Also went through JayMonkey's guide and can't find any clues there either!

Can't seem to find a solution... Anyone else having problems with iMessage after Catalina upgrade? Any suggestions as to what else I might be able to try to get it working again??

 

[esafeddie]

Run iMessageDeBugger and have a look at the values if you haven't done this already.

 

[Filouman]

@esafeddie thanks, I just ran iMessageDebugger... both ROM and BoardSerialNumber are 'failed' so I am guessing that is my issue.

ROM: failed
BoardSerialNumber: failed

I checked my config.plist and everything looks the same as before. Serial and UUID are same as I have always used... but I don't understand how to fix the ROM and MLB values.

 

[esafeddie]

ROM: failed
BoardSerialNumber: failed

Ah yes I suspected as much - this means your NVRAM is not working as it should, which means you'll probably have to put the EmuVariable Uefi driver or AptioMemory Fix.efi in EFI/Drivers/UEFI. When that is done, repair permission, reboot and run DeBugger again and note result then try iMessage again. Good luck.

 

[Filouman]

Yes! Was a quick and easy fix when you know how, lol.

Before I updated to Catalina, I also updated clover– I believe previous releases had the EmuVariable driver enabled by default? In any case, it looks like it was left out during the update to r5070.

Anyway, just dropped EmuVariableUefi.efi into EFI/Drivers/UEFI and all is well again. ROM and MLB values are reported properly and iMessage works.

Thanks so much for your help! Very much appreciated, definitely saved me a few hours of fumbling around.

 

[esafeddie]

Yes! Was a quick and easy fix when you know how, lol.

Before I updated to Catalina, I also updated clover– I believe previous releases had the EmuVariable driver enabled by default? In any case, it looks like it was left out during the update to r5070.

Anyway, just dropped EmuVariableUefi.efi into EFI/Drivers/UEFI and all is well again. ROM and MLB values are reported properly and iMessage works.

Thanks so much for your help! Very much appreciated, definitely saved me a few hours of fumbling around.

Happy you got it sorted - enjoy

 

[KevinM]

The only way I could get iMessage working on my z390 Designare was to have these two .efi's

 

[esafeddie]

The only way I could get iMessage working on my z390 Designare was to have these two .efi's

Considering you and I have the same chip set board by the same manufacturer, you may have a few unnecessary drivers in your EFI Folder also the new Clover EFI configuration has done away with the 'drivers64UEFI Folder'. The new structure is 'drivers/UEFI', have a look at my EFI Folder attached minus the config.plist for comparison. If you want to try how my EFI Folder is set up, I suggest you install the latest Clover on a spare USB drive with your config.plist, DSDT,SSDT etc, etc and construct the layout as mine and boot from it. As always if you're happy with your setup then stick with it.

P.S I did use 'OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000.efi' in the beginning but after reading that it was meant to be a temporary work around for the Z390 chipset I removed it after a more reliable alternative was found.

 

[KevinM]

Considering you and I have the same chip set board by the same manufacturer, you may have a few unnecessary drivers in your EFI Folder also the new Clover EFI configuration has done away with the 'drivers64UEFI Folder'. The new structure is 'drivers/UEFI', have a look at my EFI Folder attached minus the config.plist for comparison. If you want to try how my EFI Folder is set up, I suggest you install the latest Clover on a spare USB drive with your config.plist, DSDT,SSDT etc, etc and construct the layout as mine and boot from it. As always if you're happy with your setup then stick with it.

P.S I did use 'OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000.efi' in the beginning but after reading that it was meant to be a temporary work around for the Z390 chipset I removed it after a more reliable alternative was found.

Thanks. Ill take a look at it but I don't see any attachment.

 

[esafeddie]

Here is my EFI Folder.