My wife and I use a pair of identical MBPs: 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display (late 2013). Yesterday Messages began to misbehave on BOTH machines in the same way. After observing some minor misbehavior, we signed out of Messages and restarted our machines. When we launched Messages after the restart, it came up in a weird state:
- the app *seems* to launch just fine
- but the Messages window fails to appear
- and the Messages > Preferences... command is dimmed
(so the dialog through which you sign in is unavailable)
Sometimes relaunching the Messages app results in a large, mostly-empty window in the center of the screen with only the notice "No conversation selected."
For the record:
- We each have our own Apple ID for use with Messages, although we share another Apple ID for things like iTunes.
- We're running Messages Version 8.0 (4226) under Mavericks (OS X 10.9.5)
Troubleshooting Notes:
1. Having quit Messages, I dragged all the com.apple.iChat plist files from ~Library/Preferences to the Desktop. Restarted Messages without improvement.
2. I created a new OS X user and successfully signed in to Messages there -- yay! -- so I know that means there's trouble in my normal user's environment. While it would seem that simply moving all my "stuff" to the newly-created user's environment is a simple-enough way to cure my woes, I'm reluctant to do so. I'm a web developer whose user environment is very rich and fine-tuned to support my daily work. Transplanting that setup to a new user (without using Migration Assistant, which would likely transplant the source of the trouble, as well) would cost me dearly.
3. It would seem that upgrading our OS to El Capitan might magically fix us up ...but with a server and two laptops all inter-communicating nicely under Mavericks, I've been reluctant to push down that road. If you suggest that approach, I might choose to do that after I wrap up a big project on Saturday.
Suggestions for further troubleshooting would be greatly appreciated.
- the app *seems* to launch just fine
- but the Messages window fails to appear
- and the Messages > Preferences... command is dimmed
(so the dialog through which you sign in is unavailable)
Sometimes relaunching the Messages app results in a large, mostly-empty window in the center of the screen with only the notice "No conversation selected."
For the record:
- We each have our own Apple ID for use with Messages, although we share another Apple ID for things like iTunes.
- We're running Messages Version 8.0 (4226) under Mavericks (OS X 10.9.5)
Troubleshooting Notes:
1. Having quit Messages, I dragged all the com.apple.iChat plist files from ~Library/Preferences to the Desktop. Restarted Messages without improvement.
2. I created a new OS X user and successfully signed in to Messages there -- yay! -- so I know that means there's trouble in my normal user's environment. While it would seem that simply moving all my "stuff" to the newly-created user's environment is a simple-enough way to cure my woes, I'm reluctant to do so. I'm a web developer whose user environment is very rich and fine-tuned to support my daily work. Transplanting that setup to a new user (without using Migration Assistant, which would likely transplant the source of the trouble, as well) would cost me dearly.
3. It would seem that upgrading our OS to El Capitan might magically fix us up ...but with a server and two laptops all inter-communicating nicely under Mavericks, I've been reluctant to push down that road. If you suggest that approach, I might choose to do that after I wrap up a big project on Saturday.
Suggestions for further troubleshooting would be greatly appreciated.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram