MacBook Air restore problem

HendoIT wrote:

I recently restored my 2018 MacBook Air with Apple Configurator, and after it immediately booted to internet recovery. I tried to use internet recovery, only to get error -2003f every time, even though I have great internet and the laptop had a stable connection.

Try power cycling your router making sure to wait at least five minutes before attempting Internet Recovery again.

Unfortunately Apple doesn't explain what any of these error codes mean, but it indicates some sort of networking issue. It could be your laptop, WiFi issues, your home network, your router or modem/ONT, your ISP, or even your local Internet.

You can try accessing Internet Recovery Mode at another physical location, hopefully using a different ISP, but even if the ISP is the same at least it would eliminate any issues at your house.

You can also try connecting your laptop directly to the router using a USB-C Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter. This would bypass any hard to troubleshoot WiFi issues.

I then made an bootable usb drive to attempt to install Mac OS. When I tried to boot the laptop into the boot menu, no matter what I tried it continued to boot into internet recovery. I cannot even boot into diagnostics. And so I cannot install Mac OS on it. The battery is also dead so can only be used while charging if that helps.

That is because you must first authenticate with the T2 security chip before you can modify the T2 Mac's security settings to allow booting from USB. Unfortunately after a DFU Firmware Restore, there are no macOS admin user accounts associated with the T2 security chip so you cannot not authenticate which means you cannot access the Startup Security Utility.

At this time you must rely on Internet Recovery Mode to reinstall macOS. Once you have macOS installed & setup with an admin user account, then it will be possible to modify the system security settings to allow booting from USB.

FYI, the Apple Silicon Macs don't have this issue because the DFU Firmware Restore process will automatically push a clean copy of macOS onto the internal SSD. This is only an issue with the T2 Intel Macs (2018-2020).

Hi,

Resetting SMC as well as NVRAM could solve your issue. If it doesn't help, you'd better install macOS via Ethernet, rather than WiFi or taking your MacBook Air to your local retail AppleStore, Genius Bar or Apple Authorized Service Provider to install macOS on your MacBook Air. It's free as far as I know.

HendoIT wrote:

Thank you for the Ethernet suggestion, as that is most likely my best hope. Do you know of ANY other ways to do what I need to do, since I want to try everything before dropping a few bucks on an adapter? I have tried almost EVERYTHING that people have suggested, and my internet recovery has failed multiple times.

Thank you,

HendoIT

Unfortunately those are your options although you can take the laptop to an Apple Store or AASP to have them attempt to reinstall macOS through Internet Recovery Mode since they should have an Internet connection that can handle it.

You just need to find a good Internet connection. While your home network may be fine for most things, it appears it has issues regarding Internet Recovery Mode which has very critical needs which unfortunately are not completely detailed by Apple. An ISP may be blocking some port or service....or even causing it to be partially restricted. ISPs do a lot of nasty things to people's Internet connections and that Internet connection may not be as great as it seems if you look more closely at it. I had to deal with such an ISP (throttled my connection for years (ISP didn't want to upgrade their infrastructure & instead bullied customers & large corporations so they could double dip on charging fees to corporations that had no direct ties to them) before another one came around which provided much better service.

The real question is why you were performing a DFU Firmware Restore in the first place. That same reason could be why you are having issues with Internet Recovery Mode. Unfortunately since Apple is terrible at providing logs or decent error messages.....there isn't much we can suggest other than what has been proposed here. And the 2018-2020 T2 Intel Macs are very difficult to troubleshoot for these types of issues since the hardware is so restrictive preventing the use of a USB installer, or even booting from a normal USB boot drive at this point.