IChat not connecting properly or reliably to AIM

Question

hi there folks
i've read with interest the various problems other people are having with this and the suggestions that have been offered. so far, nothing has improved my situation. here are some relevant details:
- iChat will not reliably logon to AIM, though when this happens Bonjour works fine. when I try to log on, i often just see my buddy list grey-ed out - eventually my online buddies will show up at the top (as they should) but then quite often the next listed symptom will occur.
- if/when iChat has logged in successfully, it will often crash silently in the background. the symptom here is that any outgoing messages do not appear in the iChat window and subsequent messages are ignored by iChat, but when the application is logged off i get the return messages, meaning that my first message IS getting through though iChat is not showing that it did, and I do not see the responses until i log off.
- the only thing that seems to have worked to mitigate all this is waiting some period of time (not predictable - could be 5 minutes, could be an hour) before trying to log back on again. occasionally rebooting the mac will work, but this may be related to the time factor.
- this scenario happens on multiple computers in multiple locations (even in other countries), using different routers. my desktop at home is a mac mini PPC running X.4.10 connected via ethernet to a linksys router. my desktop here at work is the G5 listed below, connected via ethernet to an Airport Extreme base station. my laptop is a macBook core2duo 2.0 mhz, running X.4.10 and connecting wirelessly, and exhibits these symptoms at both locations with both routers.
all computers were updated to their current OS status using combo updaters.
if I run AIM 4.7 on the work desktop, it connects with no problem, so it doesn't seem to be an account-related issue with AIM. the fact that the identical problems exist across different machines running different OS versions and with different routers in different locations leaves me scratching my head.......
any insights into how to solve this would be most appreciated. any additional information needed will be gladly provided.
best regards,
hiltonius

Answer 1

ok, just in the interest of completeness.....
i believe i have solved the problem today, and thought i'd share my experience in case someone else can benefit from it.
in pursuit of another way of using iChat, I was introduced to "jabber" and started configuring new accounts on my home desktop and my laptop to access AIM, Yahoo, and MSN all through jabber. got all that working fine.
in the process of creating new accounts in iChat, the prefs file gets re-written - and I believe this cured the previous problem I was trying to address in the first place! at least so far today, the connection has not wavered, and so i'm optimistic that it'll continue to work.
the tricky thing is that I sync these computers together using mark/space "sync together" software, so I believe it's likely that this problem originated on the studio DAW, was transferred through a sync I did there a while back, and manifested itself on all the computers when I upgraded to X.4.10. as I almost never run iChat on the DAW at work, I would not have noticed the bug there before it transferred to the computers on which I do run iChat - and then at that point, i checked it on the studio DAW and noticed it there too.
so if there's a moral - when the feces flies off the proverbial fan, sometimes it's a good idea to just create a new iChat account and then even delete it if you want, just to re-write the prefs and keep everything smooth.
any alternate theories, realities, or visions of peace are most welcome.
best regards,
Rich