Internet recovery fails: -2100F

Question

Internet recovery fails: -2100F

My wife's 11" MBA just loaded the new Internet recovery update. It's not having any trouble, but just out of curiosity, I tried to test internet recovery with command-option-R. I see the globe spin, then it give me the "!" triangle with apple.com/support -2100F.

I've tried resetting the PRAM. The only difference that made is that it asked me to connect to our WiFi before failing the exact same way.

My MBA also got the same update, and I was able to successfully boot into Internet recovery with that machine just fine (our Internet connection is 60MB/sec, so this only took about 5 minutes. w00t!), so there is some difference between that machine and this one. But what?

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Feb 9, 2012 8:06 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 9, 2012 8:19 AM in response to Nicholas Sayer

Take a look at this document, paying special attention to the permissible router encryption settings. Lion Internet Recovery may be having trouble conneecting to your router, as Lion Internet Recovery is a little more restrictive than the computer can use for ordinary web browsing.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718.

Additionally, the connection has to be very reliable. Lion Internet Recovery seems to apt to stop and toss up an error code if the connection is "sketchy".

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Answer 2

Feb 9, 2012 8:46 AM in response to SP Forsythe

Again, computer A fails with -2100F, computer B works just fine. So I don't think the router settings are in question. In any event, it's a 5 gen Airport Extreme set for WPA/WPA2. Fairly pedestrian.

As for the signal quality, option-clicking the airport logo in OS X shows metrics indicative of an excellent connection, and this happens with the MBA about 5 feet of open space away from the Airport. If it requires a better connection than that, then its expectations are unreasonable.

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Answer 3

Feb 16, 2012 11:48 AM in response to Nicholas Sayer

Bueller?

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Answer 4

Feb 19, 2012 6:08 PM in response to Nicholas Sayer

On a whim, I tried it again today and it worked.

Maybe Apple's servers were having problems when I was trying it before...?

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Answer 5

May 13, 2014 2:43 AM in response to Nicholas Sayer

I am having the same problem. I used internet recovery option (cmd+r) and failed with -2100F. Did you change any thing before trying again?

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Answer 6

May 19, 2014 10:48 AM in response to sudeepfrommb

I confirm that this error was simply due to internet connection problem. I tried again without any changes and the recovery successfully completed without any error.

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Answer 7

bwurzel

Level 1

5 points

Nov 3, 2014 2:26 PM in response to Nicholas Sayer

so can you do a test run of internet recovery? how do you get out of internet recovery once you don't want to recover your hard drive?

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