Help me with iChat!

[BumpnThoseBeats]

hey all you helpers out there.

I have a problem i cannot seem to overcome. so here i am to ask for advice.

I am having problems I have never had before with the application iChat. when i start the app it tries to sign into my AIM account several times, connecting and then disconnecting over and over again very quickly until a message comes up that says "you have attempted to login too often in a short period of time. wait a few minsbefore trying to login again."

so i wait, then it does the exact same thing again.

I checked for updates hoping that there was an update that would take care of this and im up to date. i restarted the app several times as well as my computer.

anyone have any ideas or had this happen to them b4?

 

[MarkMS]

This has happened to be a bunch of times. I think it's a problem on AOL's side. The only thing that would help me is erasing some .plist files. I can't remember which .plist files I used to delete, but try this ...

1. Quit iChat. Also make sure you were not logged into AIM with another computer.
2. Go to /Users/"your_username"/Library/Preferences/
- Easy way is to click on Macintosh HD>"your_username">Library>Preferences

Now within the Preferences folder, search for "ichat" using the magnifying glass in the window and NOT the one in the menubar. Make sure to limit the search to the "Preferences" folder and not "This Mac". Now all you should get are some .plist files with the word ichat in them.

Here are some examples:

/Users/"your_username"/Library/Preferences/com.apple.ichat.AIM.plist
/Users/"your_username"/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChatAgent.plist

3. Erase all the iChat .plist files.

4. After erasing the .plist files, log in with iChat. Actually, if the message saying "you have attempted to login too often in a short period of time" just recently came up, you will need to wait about a half hour or so. You can try other AIM clients to test you are able to log in before you fire up iChat.

If all goes well, iChat should ask you to enter your AIM screen name and password again in the iChat wizard.

5. Optional: Download AdiumX (or the beta that has a lot of cool features). Now I just do my regular chatting on Adium and fire up iChat when I need to do Audio/Video.

If you have any other questions, let us know.

 

[BumpnThoseBeats]

late response

sorry for the late response but I want to sincerely thank you for helping me with my iChat problems. i erased the .plist files and that worked great. and i havent had a problem since. thanks again mark.

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

An easier way is to check the login server, in the preferences. Always have SSL checked and that the login server is "slogin.oscar.aol.com". I've had that problem a few times. No need to erase all those plist files. Another way is to delete and re-add the account.