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[FIX in thread] Find My iPhone - Works but keep getting account access error messages

A

apockalipse

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 15, 2008
94
8
Updated iOS software to 4.2.1 on my iPhone 4 and an iPhone 3G last night. Everything is working fine on both devices. I can locate them on the website or via the app on each device. I have no problem sending them messages or remotely locking either device.

However, on both devices, I keep randomly getting error messages that say "Cannot Access Account". The message also contains my Apple ID and 2 button options. 1 is the "OK" button and the other is a "Settings" button.

Hitting "OK" seems to do nothing but close the error message box. Find My iPhone continues to work fine if I just hit "OK." Hitting the "Settings" button takes you to the settings screen for Find My iPhone. Again everything looks good on that screen and if I just close it out without making any changes, Find My iPhone still works fine.

This isn't really that big of an issue except for the annoyance of getting the meaningless error messages. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to it at this point. The messages sometimes come within a few minutes of each other and sometimes they are a couple hours apart.

Anyone else experiencing this or have any ideas about fixing this?
 
Last edited:
Are you using the "free" version of Find My iPhone, because I don't think the 3G is valid for that.
 
I'm pretty sure you just need a latest generation device to set up the account intially. Aside from the account access error messages, Find My iPhone is working fine on the 3G. I set it up on the 4G first.

I was getting the error message on the 4G before I even updated the 3G.

Otherwise it seems to work fine from both devices. Both can be tracked and controlled from the website or from each device using the app.
 
apockalipse said:
Updated iOS software to 4.2.1 on my iPhone 4 and an iPhone 3G last night. Everything is working fine on both devices. I can locate them on the website or via the app on each device. I have no problem sending them messages or remotely locking either device.

However, on both devices, I keep randomly getting error messages that say "Cannot Access Account".

...

Anyone else experiencing this or have any ideas about fixing this?
Click to expand...

I've got the same thing happening on my iPhone 4. I'm using my Apple ID (which is a non-Apple email address) to sign in for Find My iPhone only. I tried re-entering my password, and the error message stopped occurring but showed up again a few hours later.

I have not configured this on any other devices, just my iPhone 4 running 4.2.1.

I think they really pushed this update out the door early to meet their iPad promises -- almost all of the new features (AirPrint, free Find My iPhone, AirPlay video, new SMS tones) seem really half-baked.
 
Dayv said:
I've got the same thing happening on my iPhone 4. I'm using my Apple ID (which is a non-Apple email address) to sign in for Find My iPhone only.
Click to expand...

Same. It's the same Apple ID I have been using for iTunes for years.
 
I posted a thread about this earlier.

It's happening on both my iPhone and my iPad. It's doing my swede in.
 
Happening to me too, on a brand new iPhone 4. Doesn't seem like anything is wrong except for this being really annoying, but I was still hoping there was some sort of quick fix like maybe setting it up again or something....
 
Add another one to the list.

Latest os and iP4.

Using gmail address if that makes any difference.

All works but as already said, error message is annoying.
 
Might have found a fix for this. At least, it's stopped happening to me since I set the following settings:

Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data > Advanced > MobileMe > Manual

Find My iPhone still works with no problems and the annoying pop up should stop.
 
Having the same problem on two new iPhone 4's. I'll try the settings change and see if that fixes the problem.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

fifi77 said:
Might have found a fix for this. At least, it's stopped happening to me since I set the following settings:

Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data > Advanced > MobileMe > Manual

Find My iPhone still works with no problems and the annoying pop up should stop.
Click to expand...

That fix sounds right, I'll post back here and report whether it worked later today.
 
fifi77 said:
Might have found a fix for this. At least, it's stopped happening to me since I set the following settings:

Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data > Advanced > MobileMe > Manual

Find My iPhone still works with no problems and the annoying pop up should stop.
Click to expand...

If its set to manual how would you send a notification to your phone from the application? I though FMi worked using push?
 
CBX said:
If its set to manual how would you send a notification to your phone from the application? I though FMi worked using push?
Click to expand...
No idea how it works. I thought Push had to be enabled too, but it doesn't.

I've tested it extensively and FMi definitely works without Push being enabled.

On my phone, Push is OFF as well as MobileMe being set to Manual and FMi works with no problems at all and has been for the last 3 days. I've not seen the error message since I set MobileMe to Manual.
 
fifi77 said:
No idea how it works. I thought Push had to be enabled too, but it doesn't.

I've tested it extensively and FMi definitely works without Push being enabled.

On my phone, Push is OFF as well as MobileMe being set to Manual and FMi works with no problems at all and has been for the last 3 days. I've not seen the error message since I set MobileMe to Manual.
Click to expand...

Same here! Thanks for the tip.
 
fifi77 said:
No idea how it works. I thought Push had to be enabled too, but it doesn't.

I've tested it extensively and FMi definitely works without Push being enabled.

On my phone, Push is OFF as well as MobileMe being set to Manual and FMi works with no problems at all and has been for the last 3 days. I've not seen the error message since I set MobileMe to Manual.
Click to expand...

I will give it a try and see how it goes. Thanks for the tip. I wouldnt have tried this as it does sound like it makes sense (to me) so Im glad you did!
 
fifi77 said:
Might have found a fix for this. At least, it's stopped happening to me since I set the following settings:

Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data > Advanced > MobileMe > Manual

Find My iPhone still works with no problems and the annoying pop up should stop.
Click to expand...

Ahh, thanks!! This seems to have done the trick. That message has been popping up since I updated and it's just been bugging me.
 
I'm seeing the issue here! The iphone is actually changing the password, hence, creating the pop up message! I noticed it because it has too many characters in the password box than what I originally put in (the last seven times now!)
 
Thanks for the fix! I've modified the title of the thread to indicate that it contains a solution to this.
 
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