MP 1,1-5,1 Mac Pro Early 2009 iMessage stopped working?

[aajeevlin]

Hi, I have a Mac Pro Early 2009, running High Sierra (10.13.6). Roughly six days ago, I was kicked off my iMessage and since then I have been unable to sign back in. I'm 100% sure my password is good as I have used it since to purchase and to sign into iCloud. The error message I'm getting is "Could not sign in to iMessage." (An error occurred during activation. Try again). Also, the iMessage on my iPhone as well as my MacBook Pro (2011) works just fine.

I've followed several online troubleshoot with no success. So finally I decided to call Apple support tonight, a very nice lady helped me with the entire process, asked a few questions and we tried a few things (nothing I have not tired already). Eventually she told me she would need to contact her senior engineer about this issue. After being on hold for roughly two minutes, she came back and told me because of the age of the Mac Pro 2009, Apple is no longer supporting iMessage on it. She said she felt that is a bit weird, but that is what the senior engineer told her to tell me.

I'm not sure if I really buy this answer. I mean the iMessage was working until just six days ago. It stopped working all of sudden and now Apple is telling me my iMessage running High Sierra is no longer supported? Can anyone advise me on this? Thanks!

Update: Solved, tl;dr, reset the NVRAM.

 

[mattspace]

The error message I'm getting is "Could not sign in to iMessage." (An error occurred during activation. Try again). Also, the iMessage on my iPhone as well as my MacBook Pro (2011) works just fine.

Reset the PRAM / NVRAM - same thing happened to me, and the PRAM Reset sorted it immediately (no amount of signing in and out of iCloud worked).

 

[tsialex]

Hi, I have a Mac Pro Early 2009, running High Sierra (10.13.6). Roughly six days ago, I was kicked off my iMessage and since then I have been unable to sign back in. I'm 100% sure my password is good as I have used it since to purchase and to sign into iCloud. The error message I'm getting is "Could not sign in to iMessage." (An error occurred during activation. Try again). Also, the iMessage on my iPhone as well as my MacBook Pro (2011) works just fine.

I've followed several online troubleshoot with no success. So finally I decided to call Apple support tonight, a very nice lady helped me with the entire process, asked a few questions and we tried a few things (nothing I have not tired already). Eventually she told me she would need to contact her senior engineer about this issue. After being on hold for roughly two minutes, she came back and told me because of the age of the Mac Pro 2009, Apple is no longer supporting iMessage on it. She said she felt that is a bit weird, but that is what the senior engineer told her to tell me.

I'm not sure if I really buy this answer. I mean the iMessage was working until just six days ago. It stopped working all of sudden and now Apple is telling me my iMessage running High Sierra is no longer supported? Can anyone advise me on this? Thanks!

This is happening for some time with a lot of Mac Pro 2009 owners, the causes are diverse, but always end in the fact that the MP4,1>5,1 don't have enough hardwareIDs to identify correctly as a real Mac.

Since I bricked my 2009 Mac Pro and repaired it but couldn't get iMessage to work again, I've I started to investigate this problem and found that:

• MP4,1>5,1 firmware upgrade process overwrite the BootROM with a MP5,1 BootBlock that don't correspond with the rest of the BootROM.
• Some MP4,1 never had all the needed hardwareIDs (override_version Base_xx, hardware descriptor, SSN, HWC, SON, Gaid, LBSN, BD) from factory or from a repair/refurb.
• Apple technicians or 3rd party sometimes forget to correctly serialise the backplane when it's replaced, this happens more commonly with in-house replacements like universities or corporations that have in-house technicians that replace the backplane themselves.
• Some Mac Pros are clones, this happens with everyone that is using a MATT card or with someone that had the backplane replaced and the old one is repaired but the SPI flash is not cleaned/not given new serial and put back in the market again, this is improbable but happens, and when Apple iMessage validation servers identifies this, the Mac Pro is blacklisted for iMessage.
• NVRAM is corrupted.

Anyway, you probably have one or more of what I explained above and this can be solved with a careful BootROM reconstruction, but as @mattspace said, clear your NVRAM before anything.

 

[aajeevlin]

Thanks guys! These are some good explanations.

I don't have the full history of the computer. It was purchased at a university surplus. I'm hoping not too much has been done to it. I'll try the NVRAM reset and get back to you guys tonight on the status.

Update: OH wow, reset the NVRAM did the trick. I guess I should have done this the very first thing. I had to look for a wired keyboard (was too lazy for a while). But thanks guys.

Also @tsialex your explanation is really good. I think I understood about half of it, haha. But it's good to know that a NVRAM reset was good enough.

 

[haralds]

In the long distant past Apple support had to reset something on the backend for my Messages on a 5,1 to work.

 

[mattspace]

Update: OH wow, reset the NVRAM did the trick. I guess I should have done this the very first thing. I had to look for a wired keyboard (was too lazy for a while). But thanks guys.

Glad the simplest solution did the trick. You also learned an unfortunate lesson about Apple support - very friendly, but not particularly knowledgable of the underlying structure of problems (or structured troubleshooting theory) outside of following a script.