Ichat won't connect to AIM

Hi. I know there's other topics with this exact problem but none of them were helpful, so I have to post my own here.
For months I have had the problem with iChat, where if I try to sign in, it collapses and expands many times and tells me I have tried to sign in too many times and to try again later. Maybe a handful of times out of the many months this has been a problem, I have randomly succesfully logged in, but of course it would mess up again a few hours later.
I downloaded the AIM app for Mac so that I would be able to chat with people, and that always worked, but I really much prefered the iChat, so I have been trying to fix it.
I changed the port to 443, that did not work. I deleted the .plist thing, did not work. I followed all of the troubleshooting guidelines I've found on this website, nothing worked. Worst of all, after doing ALL of this, it seems that it somehow messed up my AIM application too, because now when I gave up on iChat and decided to just use my AIM app again, it will no longer let me sign in, and tells me "rate limited". Now I REALLY can't do any chatting.
what the heck?

Hi,
You have OS 10.5.8 with Security Updates to get to iChat 4.0.9 (Only reported as such in iChat and using Quicklook on the app in the Applications folder - and not by Get Info)
That would appear to be Up-to Date
IF your Name and Password are letting you login to the AIM web site or with AIM Express in a web browser I would delete com.apple.iChat.AIM.plist which you will find in your Home Folder/Library/Preferences
Restart iChat afterwards. This will force a new login using info in the Keychain for your Password and Screen Name.
9:40 PM Monday; July 12, 2010
Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

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Ichat won't connect to AIM - timed out

Everything was working fine. Now I still have Jabber on ichat 4.0.7, but my (long-time expired) .mac account times out, won't connect. Just one day it worked and the next it didn't. I have tried resetting port to 443, from 5190, tried using SSL and not. double checked that my .mac and AIM passwords both work on their websites. I can't think of anything that has changed. I was just getting into this - and now it doesn't work. Any ideas please?

So at this screen originally you selected the @mac Option ?
There is an example of the Expanded drop down a little further down.
(iChat 3 pic but same for iChat 4)
There is a similar option if in the iChat menu > Preferences > Accounts you use the + Plus button to add a New Account/Screen Name.
If the Keychain (and therefore iChat) shows you the current @mac.com password but iChat is not connecting then go to your Home Folder (Little House icon)/Library/Preferences and delete com.apple.ichat.AIM.plist (by putting it in the Trash) and Restart iChat.
How to Check your Password
It may be sometime before I respond again (Note time)
10:45 PM Thursday; January 8, 2009

IChat won't connect to AIM. It says I tried to login too many times.

I was randomly using my comp when i tried to login to iChat and it tried to login several times. After it got done freaking out it suddenly said that i couldn't connect to AIM because i tried to login too many times and that i need to wait a few minutes and try again. I've tried deleting the .plist files and have also tried setting the port to a different one. It keeps coming up with the same error. Is there anyone who is also having this problem and might be able to suggest some solutions? Thanks

I take it you are trying port 443.
Try it without the SSL Login
Also try deleting the com.apple.iChat.AIM.plist and com.apple.iChatAgent.plist together.
Don't forget to restart iChat.
9:03 PM Saturday; February 16, 2008

IChat doesn't connect to AIM over wireless connection

I'm trying to connect to AIM over an open wireless connection. What happens is iChat sits there for a few minutes saying "connecting" and then eventually tells me that it can't connect. I can still connect to the internet but it won't connect iChat won't connect to AIM.

Hi John,
If you have a wireless device that is separate from your modem then you need to apply the set up to that device.
Essentially it is turning off the DHCP server.
Setting up Static Addresses is better.
Setting up Static Addresses and the router as a access point is best.
One option for some modems is to be set to Bridge mode:
All ports are open and the Public IP address is passed to the router. You then only have to worry about one set of IP addresses and will have got around the Subnet problem.
Ralph
Ralph

Ichat isn't working... won't connect to AIM???PLEASE HELP

For the past three days my ichat has not been working. At first it would not connect and I kept getting the message "Could not connect to AIM(xxx) :The connection could not be completed because it timed out or I would get host refused connection.*" I waited a day to try again and got the same problem. I also changed my port to 443 and i was able to sign in but not able to video chat. If anyone could help me with this problem i would really appreciate it. ( I am working with a newly bought MacBook pro with ichat version 4.0.8 (619) if that will be any help )

Hi,
Welcome to the  Discussions
Which Setting are you using in System Preferences > Security > Firewall ?
Do Not Use Allow Essentials as iChat is not an Essential App.
Have you set up your routing device to allow the ports iChat uses ?
Port 443 for the Login should work as it is below the 1024 threshold (ports are open up to this number)
Video chatting uses ports above this number.
If it is a routing device that appears to be the issue please tell us make and model and version number so we can direct you further.
11:36 PM Monday; September 7, 2009

IchaT won't connect--first time user!!!

I am trying desperatetly to talk to my 3 yr. old daughter on ichat.
She and her mom have an apple id with ichat and i have an aol chat name with ichat.
I read other posts and changed the network setting 443, so did she.
it won't connect and we get connection errors. no success yet. once, we both came up then froze.
that's it.
any ideas?

I'm asuming you mean video chat. Check both of your iChat Preferences Video Bandwidth Limit and make sure it is "none." With no other internet-savvy apps other than Safari running, each of you go to http://speedtest.net and do a speed test. Remember the smaller of kilobits-per-second upload and download numbers. Go into  System Preferences > Quicktime and select Streaming Speed to be the value closest to what you get from speedtest. Some people just say select 1/.5MBPS and all works well -- I have had a different experience than that so I recommend that you use the smallest of the speedtest numbers. Presumably, AIM's "wait awhile before trying to login again" penalty timer will have expired by the time you get this other stuff taken care of.
Let us know how this works out for you.
PS - are you, like, on business travel and in a hotel? You may have hotel firewall issues. Marriott chain hotels let you request a public IP address on their service signup page to bypass their restrictive port blocks, others you need to call the hotel's ISP support line and have them put you on a public IP. I think it is T-Mobile broadband that handles Hilton chain. They can do it but if you get an inexperienced customer service rep, (s)he may say that (s)he can't do that, but they can coz' I've had 'em do it for me before. And don't forget to have all ports in your Mac's firewall closed on your laptop mac that you are using in the hotel with a public IP and the Mac's firewall turned on. Don't want any internet evildoers seeing an unlocked door. iChat will open locally on your computer what ports you need.

IChat won't connect on school internet network...

hey, not sure which version if iChat i have but for some reason it won't connect on my school wireless networks.
my AIM does but ichat doesn't. What is the problem for this?
PS: off topic, AIM always shows all my buddies offline and online instead of just online in one list....anyone know how i can clean that up? thanks but ichat issue plz help me with thanks!

Hi,
Most Servers and Domestic routing device have a range of ports up to port 1024 open as default.
Port 80 is used By Web Browsers
Port 443 is used by Web Browsers on Secure Sites like the Apple Discussion Login page and Banks, PayPal etc.
Mail Also sues port 443 and 110, and a whole range of other below 1024 depending on whether they are POP or IMAP and th service that runs them.
As I suggested Port 443 It would have expected it to be open and allowed you to at Least Log on with iChat.
You could try looking at your Mail Setting and use a port listed there if you can get mail from the server involved. (port 25 may only be open to your ISP's Mail Server from home and often data is not passed on to other Mail servers on that port so it will be blocked at the ISP even if you get mail)
After that chat to the IT guys and see what they say about IM apps in general (They may be blocking the IPs for the servers to "protect" Bandwitdh or for "Security" purposes.
11:02 PM Wednesday; May 27, 2009
Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

IChat can't connect to AIM due to socket error

Hi,
Every time I try to connect to AIM via iChat, I get the following error message:
Could Not Connect To AIM
An undefined AIM socket error has occurred
Has anyone figured this one out yet? I tried deleting the PList and allowed the firewall to make connections but it still won't work.
Thanks,
Mark

Go to iChat > Preferences > Accounts > Server Settings tab and change the port to 443 whilst Logged out of AIM
10:53 PM Wednesday; November 21, 2007

Ichat won't connect

With all settings being what they were before, I can no longer reliably connect to AIM. In fact, the menu bar dropdown may indicate I'm online, but my buddy window insists that I'm offline. Selecting an 'available' status has no effect.
Settings are the same as before Lion upgrade, when iChat worked flawlessly. tossed plist files, restarted, etc., to no avail.
Any suggestions?
Thank you,
Sebastian

I ran into this problem this afternoon, after I switched from an 802.11N to G network. As you described, clicking to change my status did nothing at all and there were no error messages. Resolved it by turning wi-fi off, then on again, and now iChat connects with either network. Sounds like you've tried a few things; here's the order in which I fixed mine:
-Quit iChat
-Turn wifi off
-Launch iChat
-Turn wifi on
I was then able to switch networks and iChat continues to work. Sounds like a lot of people have this problem and I wonder if it is more prevalent on G networks. Which are you using?
I've determined that Lion definitely does not play well with 802.11G, even coming from a new Airport Extreme—we have ours set up to produce two networks so that iPhones and old computers don't slow down the rest of the machines.
Hope that helps!

Messages won't connect to AIM?

I've read the other threads I can find about this issue, but none of the advice has worked.
Yesterday when I logged into my computer, Messages wouldn't connect to AIM. I was connected to VPN at the time so I didn't worry a lot about it (it's never happened before, but VPN often causes strange issues for me), but it's still happening now that I'm back to my regular connection. It just hangs at "Connecting..." and doesn't give any error message or indication of a problem.
I don't have a firewall and I've tried unchecking the Use SSL box in Server Settings. I've deleted and re-added the account (several times), made sure that it can connect to my work chat server, and successfully added another account (Gmail). Nothing has changed in my settings or configurations or anything, just one day it worked and the next day it didn't.
What am I forgetting? Thanks for any other suggestions.

HI,
In the Finder use the Go Menu > Go to Folder and type ~/Library/Preferences in the dialogue box that appears
Find the com.apple.ichat.AIM.plist and drag it to the Trash.
Restart Messages.
This particular .plist holds the state that your login was in when it was connected (or whether it was logged out).
If the connection was dropped this can be different to the info held at AIM and therefore you get refused.
10:24 PM Thursday; June 6, 2013
 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.3)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

IChat won't connect now

Well, now there is another problem with iChat 3.1.5. I had problems with it a couple of weeks ago and it seemed to to work fine with some help here, but another problem has cropped up. I cannot connect at all now on my G5 but my MBP iChat works fine. Says "cannot connect to aim". I've restarted everything and no luck. I'm on wireless AEBS and it is fine for our G4. Any suggestions now? I'm really getting tired of this. Apple should get a fix for it!
Connie

AND this morning things are working perfectly. I've done nothing yet, woke up and tried it and it is working fine. I didn't even sleep it overnight, just kept it on. Go figure. But I'll keep this handy just in case it acts up again. Geeesh, what is going on with the AIM?!?!
Connie

IChat won't connect while abroad

I'm running iChat 4.0.2
I didn't find a forum for this version. I'm traveling right now and don't have my Leopard disk with me. My macbook came installed with Leopard and this is the version of iChat that came with it. (unless it's been upgraded by the updater since) I can't find any way to install this "iChat AV" that i have not heard about until today.
The problem is that since arriving in Hong Kong my iChat will not connect. It seems to try to connect and immediately gets booted off before and then tries again. It seems to flash an error but it disappears before I can read it on the retry. Eventually it will give me a "you have tried to connect too often in a short period of time" kind of error which I have to click to confirm.
Occasionally it will actually connect but when it does it does not show me that anyone is online. I'm fairly certain that I should see my co-workers in their usual "mobile" mode which they are in if they aren't actually online.
Something that makes this even a bit stranger to me is that earlier today it did actually connect and I was able to send a message to a coworker that iChat finally let me online. But minutes later I was booted off again and I have not been able to connect again since.
I use iChat pretty regularly with my work. I haven't traveled outside the country with my new macbook before but I don't know why it makes a difference whether I am trying to connect from Canada or Hong Kong. I'm heading to Indonesia next and it would be great if I could get back online to talk to my coworkers.
any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Message was edited by: cosmicelf

If you Preferences does not have a Toolbar with different icons across the top and is only showing one Pane and is not able to change to others then delete com.apple.ichat.plist in Users/(your account)/Library/Preferences and arestart iChat.
There is no item in any of the menus for Customise Toolbar option and the white button to the right of many other windows is absent that would toggle the Toolbar on and off.
Deleting the .plist is the only way.
10:01 PM Friday; April 25, 2008

After latest Security Update - iChat won't connect to Buddies

I just finished a software update that included the newest security update for Quicktime.
Now iChat will not connect to my buddy list at all. Adium behaves similarly.
Any suggestions?

Issue solved! I re-downloaded and installed the Jan. '07 encryption update for iChat.
Both iChat and Adium work now.

Ichat won't login to aim account

I have snow leopard. and ichat was working fine. then my router died so I bought a new on a netgear wnr3500v2. everthing works great, except ichat. I can use aim software to see aim buddies, but when I try to use ichat to see aim buddies, I get disconnect error.
I replaced netgear router with a linksys router and the problem went away.
I tried all of the suggestions posting at netgear, and other websites before buying a new router, and I called netgear, who stated that it was a aim issue.
so my advice is avoid netgear routers if you use ichat.

Hi,
Welcome to the  Discussions
Netgears on the whole come with UPnP turned On so that the iChat Login on port 5190 would normally work.
(AIM uses fall back ports to get around firewall setting using Mail and Web Browsing ports if port 5190 is not open)
Not all Netgears though have UPnP enabled and this may have been the issue.
There about two models that have difficultly with iChat Audio Only and Video Chats but this can depend on which version of those model you have.
Having had a Netgear DG834G and knowing other people who post regularly in the iChat Forums have also had various Netgears I would have a different view to yours.
3:07 PM Saturday; February 20, 2010
Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

Ichat won't connect to my AIM screen name

I bought my mac a few days ago and everything was working fine with ichat. I woke up one morning and it was asleep, and when I woke it up and tried to sign onto ichat it "hiccuped" then wouldn't sign on and gave me an error message saying I have tried to sign on too many times in a short period of time and it said i should wait a few minutes before trying again. I waited, restarted, and shut down my machine and it is not working. Any suggestions on how to fix this?

I have had 6 other housemates, in the same house, on the same university network, for the last year and a half. Two others have macs (another macbook, and a mac mini (old)). I have owned my macbook for almost a year now, and iChat has worked beautifully the whole time, except for this last month. I talked with the University IT people (I have software engineer friends who graduated and now work for them) and nothing has been changed.
iChat is currently working so I dont want to mess with it. It wasnt working about an hour ago though. The next time, which I am sure will be soon it has problems again, I will try port 443. Thanks.
<Venting>
I guess this is just the week to have mac problems. On a side note, my airport express randomly goes into long fits of dropping and reconnecting every 10 seconds. I am working with other threads for this problem, but I switched from a PC to get rid of these issues; and for the last 11 months I have. I know I really push my computers to their max and try to get every single drop of performance from every clock cycle, but I am not buying any more apple products, nor will I continue to recommend them as I have for the previous 11 months until this is fixed.
</Venting>

Ichat won't connect to AIM

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