Couldn't get connection factory client

I got this error: ERROR/MapActivity(258): Couldn't get connection factory client

Everything worked fine, it's all of a sudden, how come that happens? I know my api key is fine, because one month I've been using it perfectly. How come all of a sudden it doesn't show me the map activity, and posts that error in the logcat?

I had reinstalled Android dev kit on my new system and the debug.keystore had changed. Once I used the keytool to make a new MD5 and registered that with Google I was back in action with a fresh apiKey.

"Couldn't get connection factory client" is a weird message for an invalid apiKey !

I'm getting the same problem when using getFromLocationName, with a 'java.io.IOException:Service not Available' error.

I've done a bit of googling around and it seems this is a bug in the software.

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=8816

I had the same problem with API level 8 on both emulator and a physical device (2.2) Actually, for me it never worked. Then by chance I tried on emulator API level 10 (with Google API of course), and it worked just fine.

(Before that, I got a new MD5 with the keytool in order to register for a new apikey. However, I got exactly the same as the first time! Maybe I didn't use the keytool correctly.)

I had this error but nothing useful in the Logcat output to determine the AV.

I simply cleaned my project in Eclipse and then I got a proper stack trace of the problem, which was nothing related to MapView. It was just that the MapView was based in the first activity visible.