Unfortunately IMS has stopped working, how can I get it working?

[AC Question]

Unfortunately IMS has stopped working

Downloaded the most recent software update for my Galaxy S6 Active, now I have a pop up that WILL NOT go away "Unfortunately, IMS has stopped working." Cannot restart my phone, cannot turn off the phone...as soon as you hit "ok" for the pop up, it immediately comes back. HELP!

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Was it an official system update pushed over-the-air?

You can force a shutdown by pressing and holding Power and Vol Down together for about 10-15 seconds. Then boot into Recovery Mode and wipe the cache partition: https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-21095. Reboot the system again normally, and see if the problem persists.

If it continues, see if it persists in Safe Mode: https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-21007

 

[Phoneguy108]

My phone was a brick after the upgrade to 6.0. I had issues with the messenger app as well.
I did a factory reset and it has been working great since then.

 

[504sweetiekins]

I am not the most tech savvy person at all. I cleared app caches, force stopped apps, and cleared the system cache, to no avail. I turned off the backup and sync feature of my service provider. Messages>Settings>AT&T Messages Backup & Sync. It seems to have stopped. Hope this helps someone.

 

[Giri Reknar]

Thanks this was good lead and I handled it differently, Thanks

 

[Frmdiver1]

Welcome to Android Central! Was it an official system update pushed over-the-air?

You can force a shutdown by pressing and holding Power and Vol Down together for about 10-15 seconds. Then boot into Recovery Mode and wipe the cache partition: https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-21095. Reboot the system again normally, and see if the problem persists.

If it continues, see if it persists in Safe Mode: https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-21007

The fix is actually much simpler if this is happening on AT&T phone the Backup&synch messages is likely to be the cause of this issue. Turn it off and the "IMS serv stop" message popup will stop. Apparently it is not getting along with the latest Marshmallow update. I just fix my wife's S7 by turn it off. Go to Messages>more>settings>AT&T Backup&synch and turn it off.

 

[GandalfPR]

I found the probable cause of the problem. You need to activate the Messaging app to "appear on top". To do that, go to Settings -> Apps -> Application manager -> (press the 3 dots on the upper right corner to access the pull down menu) -> Apps that can appear on top.

On that screen look for Messages and move the slider to the "on" position and voila!.... problem gone.

Do the same for each app that starts sending similar messages (for example, in my case I got a similar message from Google contacts and just by turning on the Contacts option to appear on top solved the problem.

Hope this helps!