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Recently Google chat was depreciated by Hangouts. One of our employees is experiencing a strange issue with Hangouts after this change -- She can't connect and can't receive messages. Hangouts works fine for the rest of the team on the same Gsuite @domain so we figured over the weekend this issue would resolve itself. It did not.

We tried turning chat on and off. Cleared everything. Tried on fresh PC's with no history of her account. Logged out everywhere. Monitored connects through Fiddler. Etc etc. She does not use Hangout app. There are no plugins installed. We didn't change domains or touch DNS. All the stuff is code 200 on the client end. It seems to be Google "server" side.

All forum threads I have seen are supremely unhelpful. "Did you try clear-cache/restart/different-browser?" kind of replies with the sound of crickets further down the threads. Yes we did all that. Google help says it's prob network based (which is false considering the rest of the team accounts work).

Has anyone experienced this? How do we solve these errors and connect?

dhaupin
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  • Did you try to use a new google account to test on the same device ? – Tech-IO Mar 27 '17 at 18:16
  • @GiaRui Yeah it's not device related from what I can tell. Tried it on a couple different machines, same issue. She is also able to use other Hangouts accounts fine on that PC so I don't think its network/antivirus/etc related. – dhaupin Mar 27 '17 at 19:47
  • The device is connecting to the gmail account and hangouts through web-email or email-client ? – Tech-IO Mar 27 '17 at 21:05
  • @GiaRui It fails through web (gmail, hangouts) and fails in apps (chrome extension, android app). I just spun a vanilla/fresh android, adder her account, and the hangouts error is simply "Couldn't to the server". I connected with my account from the same Gsuite, and it works fine on that device. – dhaupin Mar 29 '17 at 18:25
  • Did you try to change the password of the email-account ? Perhaps changing the imap setting. Or trying from another IP/proxy. – Tech-IO Mar 29 '17 at 19:07
  • @GiaRui We tried using the "sign out all other web sessions" and doing a password reset. Then spun up an Ubuntu 16.04 image, hooked up to a Canadian VPN, tried the account again through Chrome and Firefox. Switched on/off IMAP + Chat. Unfortunately, it fails with the same error. Very strange. – dhaupin Mar 31 '17 at 14:33
  • Seems not simple this server error issue and get insight. How was the monitoring of tcp/udp with fiddler ? Did you try with whireshark or tcpdump. Here is a link with some information about https://support.google.com/a/answer/1279090?hl=en. Yes seems strange, might be a google problem. – Tech-IO Mar 31 '17 at 16:39
  • @GiaRui Yeah def. Nothing really seemed amiss when I tried it through Fiddler. We finally gave in and called Gsuite support -- I guess it's strange enough that they got their engineers on it. I will post the solution here if it's something one can do (since this/similar Hangouts error has a bunch of un-resolved threads around the net since ~2014). Thanks though for your suggestions. – dhaupin Mar 31 '17 at 18:51
  • @GiaRui Finally figured it out -- it was a corrupted "Organization Unit" in Gsuite. Not sure how, nor are the Google engineers :) Thanks for your help. – dhaupin Apr 04 '17 at 20:54
  • Yes, great you could solve the problem! Strange it was corrupted, maybe it should be removed and renewed. – Tech-IO Apr 05 '17 at 09:38

2 Answers2

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After much trial and error across devices, OS's, networks, and facilities, we have finally solved "Errors: 212, 213, 214" in Hangouts.

In our case, the users Gsuite Organization Unit (we will call it a "group") was corrupted. The only way the user was able to use hangouts was when they were moved to a different or fresh group. The Google engineers didn't have a solution as to why this specific "Support" group became corrupted.

So, deleting the old group, recreating it, and re-assigning the user(s) to that fresh group seemed to work. Hangouts is now alive and kicking again. Thanks for all the good suggestions everyone.

dhaupin
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Try to actually install the google hangouts extension here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-hangouts/nckgahadagoaajjgafhacjanaoiihapd

If that doesn't work, then send messages to 20 peeps on your android hangouts (Just say hi or somethin) and refresh your gmail page. If you have Gbridge, uninstall that. Hangouts should work now.

Aiden Hong
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  • Unfortunately, it does not function in hangouts extension nor the hangouts android app, so she can't send messages to people. See https://superuser.com/questions/1192829/google-hangouts-wont-connect-errors-212-213-214?noredirect=1#comment1734192_1192829 – dhaupin Mar 29 '17 at 18:25