Installing macOS Sierra results in the error message "The installer payload failed signature check"

I have same issue too. My Macbook pro is mid 2012, 2,9 GHz Intel Core i7. At the moment I cannot get through any osx version. El Capitan or any other updates couldn't get through via Mac App Store. Those previous updates are never gone through. When timing gets 0 zero it starts another 30 minutes and it goes repeatedly. Finally I tried MacOS Sierra, it is

The installer payload failed signature check. I tried all solution described by other none of them seemed to work. I was told Apple support team try it on different internet which was same error. i tried external hard driver was another death end.

Any suggestion?

Best,

Altan

I have gotten this error while trying to install Sierra, and similar ones while trying to install older versions of macOS/OSX, the issue is rarely hardware related. The easiest thing to try is to open terminal and check the date. Often times the reason it is failing the signature check is because the date is incorrect. You can open terminal from within the recovery partition or the bootable installer and type date to see the system time. If its off, follow this pattern to set the time correctly.

date {month}{day}{hour}{minute}{year} e.g. date 0923115416

This has worked for me most of the time, if not hardware diagnostics are needed.

I have the same issue. MacBook Pro 15 Mid 2015/512/16GB . I have tried every method including the online recovery, install from USB, Erase all partitions and Setup New Partitions, Boot into a USB drive on which I had installed Sierra before and run the setup from there. Nothing is helping. For me I do get Disk not ejected properly for my internal flash drive when I install on that. If I push in a second USB drive and install on that the OS installs just fine. I am guessing for me the Flash SSD or North bridge is failing (Hardware Issue). If you are seeing this too, maybe take it in for repairs at Apple.

Hello, all:

If you get that installer payload failed signature check error, open Terminal, and type the following before installing:

date 0201010016

This worked for me when I had this issue with an OS X El Capitan USB install flash drive I created some time ago, and now, it also works with the macOS Sierra USB install flash drive I prepared for a Late 2009 Unibody MacBook earlier today. It should work with your install methods, as well.

Hope this helps!

EDIT - Noticed someone else posting a similar solution on here earlier!

In my case > Dutch Belgian

iMac-****:SharedSupport ***$ shasum InstallESD.dmg

ff59036a9f8ea86b414942860bfdfd2111539988 InstallESD.dmg

iMac-****:SharedSupport ****$ md5 InstallESD.dmg

MD5 (InstallESD.dmg) = f7908f8838dc725fb82297250883397c

Thanks for your advice waiting untill start-up problems will be resolved

Hi there,

I found that if time date/time is (very) wrong on your mac, you get this error. To make your life more difficult, booting from an Sierra OS X installer disk/USB drive doesn't necessarily show a clock in the top-right corner of the screen. So if you have the same experience as I did.. it took me a while to notice this discrepancy.

For me, I disconnected the battery while installing a new hard disk, so I needed to use the terminal utility in the recovery system to update your clock using the ntpdate command and specifying an appropriate time server. If you're connected to the internet, you can use the command below, and then restart the OS X installer.

ntpdate -u time.apple.com

I really hope this helps you (and anyone else who comes across this page).

Good luck!

Hamish

Just tried upgrade from elcapitan,wish i hadnt as everything was running sweet-not now,got the same error message,signature not recognised or similar.Now the whole computer has turned to ****.
Will try OS recovery and reinstall from internet as it seems my best option.

Got it sorted,playing around ages ago i split my "mackintosh HD"in two and the new disc is where i chose to put OS Sierra and thats all that was stored on it.So went to utilities which took an eternity to open because of the install issues then i erased the disc.Also it seemed that google chrome was the main culprit in jamming up CPU as the "chrome helper"was erased so i dragged that to the rubbish and it came good with a reinstall of chrome.Also had to reset email account passwords as they were lost in failed "Sierra" install.
Checked time and date settings first and they were correct,i aint no computer tech however chrome was definitely where things went pair shaped after sierra failed to install.Its going sweet again anyway,jagged a result there somewhere.

Had this problem doing a complete new install of Sierra to Macbook that had gone completely flat so it had lost its clock. Resetting date and time worked perfectly but be aware the default timezone for the clock is PDT so you should probably adjust your entry to reflect that rather than where you are actually located

Hi there,

I was having the same issues, and definitely there is nothing wrong you've been doing.

I'd like to inform you after downloading the latest version Installer "macOS Sierra.app" (version 10.12.1) (released on 10/27/16), and recreated a USB Installer using the terminal, I was able to get rid of the issues.

Like in some other replies, you may have seen, about using the terminal to update the date; in my case, that was not my situation, since after trying that out; I was still facing the same error.

So, please, download the latest version of the macOS Sierra installer, and redo your USB installer; it should work this time.

*Looks the previous installer itself, had issues on its own, and Apple has fixed it on this new release version 10.12.1.

I hope this reply may have been of some help for you or anyone looking for a solution related to this error.

Thank you

Hi there,

My situation was a bit different from you guys but I managed to solve it. So would like to share here hope can help anyone who has similar case as mind.

My first attempt to install Sierra on my MBP15 Mid-2010 was through AppStore by clicking the Update button on the big banner, it was able to download the media but few minutes after the installation process started it returned me the error message "The installation payload failed signature check". I Googled round for a while and came to this thread trying few suggestion mentioned here but no luck.

At the end, I deleted the previous downloaded installer and re-download through AppStore (Search "Sierra" then click Download, make sure you have deleted the previous downloaded copy of Sierra installer) and then install from that copy and bingo, it worked for me.

My conclusion was, for some reason the downloaded file dmg image was not complete, however, because the installer launcher is a separate program so you won't get the error message until the installer unpack the dmg.

As a side note, I did try verifying shasum and md5 result as suggest by few others in this thread but I've got different results so that may imply the checksum method may not apply everyone.

Good Luck!

Dan

My installation is taking more than 7 hours so I just went about my day and ignored it for a while, but if it isn't making and progress in the log (give it about an hour between progress) then it might be hung, I would recommend possibly restarted or recreating the installer.

Well, my checksum's are different from each other. Can't install Sierra. Don't know what to do anymore. Time didn't solve my problem.

Screenshot attached.

I did the process Dr.Ripco described and the checksums were nothing like those.

Last login: Tue Jan 2 10:54:37 on ttys000

Alans-MBP:~ Alan$ cd "/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/SharedSupport"

Alans-MBP:SharedSupport Alan$ shasum InstallESD.dmg

eb0915d88664c7b296159b9baf13570b4ed09963 InstallESD.dmg

Alans-MBP:SharedSupport Alan$ md5 InstallESD.dmg

MD5 (InstallESD.dmg) = ba1cbdd05db5b6d4064c5ee1800a8d76

Alans-MBP:SharedSupport Alan$