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MobileMe computer registration fails

Written by Shawn Grimes on August 15th, 2008

I was trying out Apple’s new MobileMe service and I was having a hard time registering my computer for sync. I would click the Register button and things would spin for a while and then nothing. No error message of any sort, it would just stop and the registration would fail. After searching log and hard on the web, I found an article that offered a number of potential solutions. It turned out my problem was a series of entries in my /etc/hosts file for mac.com. I edited the file and removed the entries and voila, registration worked.

Do the following:

1. Type ’sudo nano /etc/hosts’ in the terminal. Type your admin password.

2. Delete any line that is related to dotmac. By default /etc/hosts contains only four entries.

You can easily delete them from the command line by using the arrow
keys to get to the right line, then press CTRL+K to cut them out.

Save the file (CTRL+O then ENTER) and close the terminal window.

3. Either wait for the OS X DNS server to reload the file, or restart your computer. I did the latter, just to be sure.

 

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3 Comments so far ↓

  1. Anonymous says:
    September 9, 2008 at 8:51 pm

    I’m in MobileMe hell. I’ve had three chats with their AWFUL support people and I’m getting nowhere. I’ve seen this posted as a solution for a few people but when I check mine, I see 4 lines with no mention of MobileMe or .Mac or anything like that. What should it say? If I delete it all will it rebuild?

  2. Shawn Grimes says:
    September 10, 2008 at 10:47 am

    If you only have 4 lines in your /etc/hosts file, this is likely not your problem. Your lines are probably similar to:

    ##
    # Host Database
    #
    # localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
    # when the system is booting. Do not change this entry.
    ##
    127.0.0.1 localhost
    255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
    ::1 localhost
    fe80::1%lo0 localhost

    That’s what my hosts file looks like now (and works). Yours is probably similar so I don’t think this is your issue. Sorry.

  3. Paul says:
    May 14, 2009 at 6:55 pm

    A far easier way is to log in to iTunes with the Mobileme information. While there, I went to my account information. Without closing iTunes, I then went to Mobileme to register the computer and it registered right away. Go figure

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