[jfobart]

So I signed up for the .Mac test drive in the spring, and liked it for a few reasons, but one big one being syncing my iCal from my powerbook and my G5 and back and forth.... So I bought a subscription in June and everything was chugging along fine for about 2 months.

But for some reason all of a sudden, my G5 won't sync. I've done some digging on the .Mac help forums over at Apple, and even posted message there, but the only response I got was from someone in the same boat as me... great!

So anyways, the powerbook still syncs just fine with .Mac, but the G5 doesn't. When I click on the little sync icon in the tool bar, the only options listed are "No Status/Syncing Disabled/Open .Mac Pref" instead of the usual "Last Sync, etc...."

If I open .Mac pref's, it shows my correct account name and password, then it logs in in the background and after a few seconds it will even tell me how many days are left till my account renews- so obviously my machine can talk to .Mac.

But if I click on Sync, I get an error message saying: "Sync Unavailable. An unknown error occurred while performing a sync operation. Please check your account and network settings, then try again." Behind the error message though I can see that "Synchronize with .Mac is checked, but it's greyed out....

Anybody have any ideas on why all of a sudden my G5 won't talk to or sync with .mac?

Thanks everyone!!

[SMacTech]

I have had this problem in the past, using several Macs. But I was able to get it to work by deleting it as a registered computer, and then adding it back in the Advanced Tab in .Mac prefs.

[jfobart]

Unfortunately, when I got .Mac Pref's in SysPref's, under Advanced there are no computers listed as registered computers. And the buttons (Register This Computer, and Reset Sync Data) are both greyed out.... is there a pref file of some sort that maybe I can delete and have it restore those buttons to being available to me?

[SMacTech]

I don't know the answer, other than the obvious, there is no account information entered, or the password entered is incorrect in the Account tab for .Mac.

[jfobart]

Well, I've checked my account name and password, heck, I even logged in online and reset my password to something new and changed it on both machines (where I got "password validated" messages both times), and the problem still continues....

Aside from posting another message at .Mac's help forums (where I received no help), can I call 1800SOSAPPLE for .Mac problems? If not, who do I call?

[slugslugslug]

I've been having this same problem since July. Haven't seen anyone else with it 'til now, and it never seems pressing enough (it happens on my PowerBook, which I use less than my unaffected iMac) to call tech support. But I might have to soon.

Maybe this will help get some ideas from folks: If I have Console open when I click on the Advanced tab to get this error message, I get a little info. crashdump says that SyncServer crashed; System Preferences says the SyncServer is unavailable, and that connection went invalid while waiting for a reply.

If anyone out there is great at reading crash logs, lemme know and I'll post or PM my SyncServer.crash.log

jfobart, if you figure out whom to call, post it here. Maybe we can both get some help out of Apple.

[Philip J. Fry]

Originally Posted by jfobart

Well, I've checked my account name and password, heck, I even logged in online and reset my password to something new and changed it on both machines (where I got "password validated" messages both times), and the problem still continues....

Aside from posting another message at .Mac's help forums (where I received no help), can I call 1800SOSAPPLE for .Mac problems? If not, who do I call?

Good luck calling Apple. All of .Mac support is web based (according to AppleCare). The only thing I can think of is move /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration to the desktop, restart and try again. All this does is reset your network prefs as if the machine is brand new.

[Randman]

Trash plist. Reset sync data.

[slugslugslug]

Originally Posted by Randman

Trash plist. Reset sync data.

That's a no-go. I'm assuming you mean trash com.apple.dotMacSync.plist, the trashing of which does nothing useful. Also the "Reset sync data" button is grayed out in that cursed Advanced pane. I suppose there might be something else I could trash, but my next best guess would be something in the ~/Library/Application Support/SyncServices folder. Apple says to avoid that one like a swarm of angry bees.

Admittedly, one thing I didn't try was to log out of the gui and trash the plist file from the command line of another user or machine. If anyone's given that a whirl and has some results, lemme know. Otherwise I suppose I'll get 'round to it sometime and report back.

Anybody got any other ideas?

[JKT]

From System Preferences>Accounts, create a new user, log in to that account and input your .Mac prefs for that new user. Try synching etc - if it works, then there is something specific about your normal account that is FUBARed, if it doesn't, then it is something in your system config that is FUBARed. The former should be easy to locate and solve, the latter a bit trickier...

Is there an Apple Store in Philly that you can go to?

Btw, you can log out and delete the test account afterwards.

[slugslugslug]

Originally Posted by JKT

From System Preferences>Accounts, create a new user, log in to that account and input your .Mac prefs for that new user. Try synching etc - if it works, then there is something specific about your normal account that is FUBARed, if it doesn't, then it is something in your system config that is FUBARed. The former should be easy to locate and solve, the latter a bit trickier...

I hadn't tried that because I assumed the dialog was lying about my network settings being a possible culprit. Didn't seem plausible. But you were certainly right to suggest that it's worth trying. I did, and it confirmed my suspicions: it's specific to my user.

Originally Posted by JKT

Is there an Apple Store in Philly that you can go to?

Nah. King of Prussia is a half-hour drive, but I've got no car. There's an independent retailer around, but I don't know if they'll do support for me, since I haven't bought anything from them. I'm in college, but I can't seem to find a general Mac helpdesk for my school. There was one the last time I was in school, but IT is less centralized here..

Anyway, if anyone's got any more ideas, speak up..

[JKT]

I would consider deleting your username and password from the .Mac preferences, deleting all references to dotmac, iDisk and Backup from your account preferences, application support etc and then restarting, re-inputting your .Mac username etc and see if that works.

N.B. Backup your home directory first, just in case you need to revert back to what you had before!

[Randman]

Or contact Dotmac and see if they can resolve the issue on their end.

[JKT]

As it works fine under a different account, the problem more than likely exists on the OP's computer, don't you think?

[slugslugslug]

I can't speak for the OP's computer, but since I have 2 Macs and the problem shows up on one, I can't imagine there's anything to resolve on .Mac's end. I may try figuring out how to get to a real person at Apple for help anyway, but it's still not a huge priority as my main computer is working okay.

JKT, your suggestions about trying to purge everything dotMac-related from ~/Library and ~/Library/Application Support are good. Though Apple does actually liken the SyncServices to a swarm of bees. For real. I guess as long as I back up both Macs beforehand, I don't need to worry much.

I'll do my best to get around to that later this week and report back, for the 3 or so of y'all who are following this riveting drama

cheers.
Y.

[JKT]

I would assume that deleting the entire folder and resetting .Mac to nowt would not be a problem - you are in effect un-installing your account and starting again from scratch (as if you had just started using .Mac in a new account or on a new computer). I can well understand that removing bits and pieces from SyncServices would indeed be pretty stupid if you were going to continue using the same .Mac set-up afterwards. However, a backup is essential before doing this just in case something does go amiss.

FWIW, in AddressBook, you can backup your database to your hard drive and revert to it at any time. File>Back up Adress Book...

[slugslugslug]

Okay, I got 'round to it today and had success. Again, my setup is the reverse of the OP's: sync was working on my desktop and broken on my PowerBook. I used Backup to back up everything that I sync via .Mac on both computers (not that it mattered much on the PowerBook, since I wanted to replace that stuff w/the settings from the iMac..) Then I logged out of my user on the PB and accessed my PB home diretory from the iMac. I moved the following out of their parent folders:

• the file "~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dotMacSync.plist"
• the folder "~/Library/Application Support/SyncService"
• the folder "~/Library/Application Support/SyncServices"

Then I unmounted the PB's home directory from the iMac, logged back in to the PB, and launched the .Mac Preferences pane. Clicked on the Sync tab, and the top checkbox wasn't greyed out. Yay. Checked it after making sure it was set to sync manually. Clicked the Advanced tab and no error dialog. Double Yay. Clicked "Reset Sync Data.." and told it to go .Mac -> This Computer. It worked. All my bookmarks, iCal data, etc, seem to be the same on both computers.

jfobart, I suggest you give this a whirl. I don't know if you downloaded the Backup.app, but even with a trial account, you should be able to use it to back up the appropriate settings to a local drive. If not, it shouldn't be hard to figure out exactly what the files/folders are and copy them manually. I can't stress enough the importance of this, because as Apple mentioned in that technote, there's that chance that you could propagate old or blank data to the .Mac server and back to your PowerBook. Admittedly, the chance seems slim, but the scenario would be disastrous without proper backup.

Thanks for the suggestions folks, and thanks jfobart for bringing this up, inspiring me to get around to thoroughly troubleshoot it.

[jfobart]

I've been actively following these new suggestions for the past few days, but I've been on the road so I haven't had access to my G5 & PB at the same time- but I'm home tonight and have tomorrow off so I'll definitly give it a go and report back with my results.

Thanks for the input everyone- hopefully we can figure this out and from now on people can just search out this problem and find the solution here.

[jfobart]

IT WORKED!! HOORAY!

Finally I'm back in business... thanks for all your hardwork slugslugslug, hopefully now this thread will contain the solution for someone when this problem happens to them!

[SezMe]

Just wanted to say thanks to those who have gone before.