During a demo today could not use Messages for video chat or screen share - Why?

I was giving a demo / class today for some people in a volunteer group I work for. They all got new MacBook Airs or MacBook Pros, and I got a MacBook Pro because I am going to be going into explain how to use them.

Most everythng went well, but one really cool thing I do all the time from home on my iMac I couldn't get to work. That part of the lesson was a disaster, though fortunately everything else went well.

I'd like to figure out what dumb thing I was doing wrong so I can show them next week.

I know we have to sign in with AOL accounts for screen sharing to work in Messages. So first I had everybody sign up for a free AOL account. That went fine.

Then we all logged in using our accounts. That went fine for everybody except one person. We could all see each other online, with little video cameras next to our names in the Buddy List. One person never showed up anywhere for some reason.

But we could not do either video chats or successfully request to share other peoples' screens, which I do all the time at home to help other people with their Macs.

One person could not even see any requests from me pop up. One person could see my requests come in and accepted them, but nothing happened after that.

Ordinary message chats were working ok.

Things I already thought of:

1. Perhaps the wi-fi in the bulding was blocking some ports? Just in case, I turned on mobile hotspot (tethering) on my iPhone 5 and had everybody connect to my network. But the results were the same, so it wasn't that.

2. I wasn't sure it mattered, but in Settings > Sharing I made sure that everbody had screen sharing turned on. And just in case, even though I don't have this set from home, I further made sure everybody had "anyone may request to control the screen" checked.

While I could do local network sharing of screens (via the Devices list in the Finder side panel), I couldn't for the life of me get it to work with Messages. But I've been doing this for years from home to help my sister and other people across town with their Mac by doing screen sharing this way and taking over their screen.

It must be something dumb I'm overlooking. Anybody know what it is?

The AppleCare support people have called me back twice so far to try tests with me. They can't figure out what is wrong either. They are still looking into it and promised to call me back.

Thanks,

Doug

Did you try deleting the account and putting it back on the machine? Possibly try to repair the disk permissions on the machine and see if that solves any issues that you were having.

rabbitjetta said:

Did you try deleting the account and putting it back on the machine? Possibly try to repair the disk permissions on the machine and see if that solves any issues that you were having.

Click to expand...

If you mean the AOL accounts, yes we tried that. It wasn't a "repair permissions" issue either. Something else is happening.

AppleCare still hasn't gotten back to me. I wonder if they themselves are having trouble getting it to work on their test machines.

By the by, these are all brand new machines, all bought within the last 2 weeks, and this was the first time for all of us to use Messages on these machines. So it was the first time to set up any accounts in Messages.

Thanks,

doug