"Recovery server could not be contacted" Error Message

If you are trying to install Mac OS X (while in mac os recovery mode) onto a new volume on your Mac over your LAN network or Wi-Fi, you may receive an error.

The recovery server could not be contacted.

A solution provided by a user (Brano) on our site:

1. Launch Terminal and type:

ntpdate -u time.apple.com

2. Proceed normally.

The problem is, SYSTEM DATE is wrong, and CERT validation is failing (https)

First, ensure your Mac is connected to a wired or wireless network. To connect wired network, plug an Ethernet cable in. To connect to a wireless network, go to the top right corner of the screen and choose the wireless icon and connect to a network.

As with others in this thread, setting the date using the date command in Terminal worked for me too.

Even though my battery was fully charged (and normally the date is fine) it still showed as an incorrect date when I typed date at the prompt.

To fix it I typed date 1215115317 at the prompt which set the date and time to December 15 2017 at 11:53 AM, closed the Terminal and then tried to install the OS again. This time it worked!

Thank you this was my problem. In recovery mode, I did as you mentioned. I accessed the Terminal via drop down menu on the bar. Then used the window that is opened which is blank. I checked the date just to make sure that was the problem. All I had to do is type Date. The date came back to January 1st. It was here that I knew I had to change it. So, I inputted the correct UTC time in the format you provided mmddhrmiyr (month day time in military format and year). WALA! Problem solved! I was able to by pass the RECOVERY SERVER COULD NOT GET CONTACTED prompt.

Note: you will need the current UTC time! All you need to do is google “current UTC” and that is it. Formatted as mentioned above and enter. Quit terminal and go back to reinstall software.

I was trying to reinstall High Sierra on an older MacBook Air using internet recovery and I kept on getting an error message when trying to reinstall High Sierra.

The recovery server could not be contacted

It appears that this has to do with the time on the machine not being synchronized, so when the MacBook tries to reach out to the recovery server the certificates do not validate and we get this useless error message.

To fix this.

1. Open up a Terminal from the utilities menu
2. Enter the following command

sudo ntpdate -u time.apple.com

Try to install High Sierra again. It should just work™.

Quoting literally user Jo Desmet below, this solved it for me:

"Get a terminal window, frome the recovery menu. The menu bar at the top, not the window dot in the middle. Then enter the date command and you should see some some old date at January 1st. My MBP has a battery problem and wasn’t plugged in for a while so the system date got reset.

To fix type

date 1016200017

which is October 16th 20:00 (or 8pm) 2017.

So mmddhhmiyy

all two digits.

After that recovery worked. Must have something to do with certificate validity or something maybe."

Remember to use the current date.

Solved.

In my case I was trying to do a re-install of the OS form the startup utilities and kept getting this error.

The trick was to set the clock. Start the Terminal app from utilities to get a bash terminal. Type `date` to display the current date/time. In my case it was set to January 1st. I remember it was common with Windows Update to fail to update your system if the system clock was not "close" to the correct time.

Set the date with:

date 1114125317

(this example sets the date to November 14th, 12:53 2017)

Re-run the recover OS option and it should work.

In my case it was a proxy server blocking requests.

All my machines go through Privoxy as part of having a sane Internet experience. One Mac refused to install High Sierra. Checking the Privoxy logs the problem machine was blocked when contacting sr.symcd.com and s2.symcb.com (Symantec domains, wha?) in addition to the permitted accesses to iadsdk.apple.com, swcdn.apple.com, swdist.apple.com and swscan.apple.com. None of my other Macs tried to access those domains but when I temporarily whitelisted them the install process completed successfully.

***NOTE IT IS THE CLOCK BEING WRONG****

I JUST had this problem ...bought a new SSD and followed set up unplugged battery as instructed installed hard drive to have it say can't connect to recovery server...since I have had clock issues with other computers before after 7 HOURS of trying to figure out what was wrong..granted if clock showed with new hard drive I would of checked it out there but no access to clock...I decided to put the old hard drive back since it was still working shut it off DID NOT UNPLUG BATTERY this time ..turned it on ...and CLOCK WAS WRONG ...reset it and powered off leaving battery plugged in and reinstalled new hard drive and IT WORKED ...update worked and OSX installed w/o a hitch...

1) Verify that you are connected to the internet and try again. If this does not solve your problem move onto step 2.

2)Open terminal and type: ntpdate -u time.apple.com

3)Then try and run the installation again.

I had the same problem, but this is what I did, I needed to change my macbook date and time

on your macOS X Utility

Click on the Utilitie and you will get a dropdown list, select terminal

Type this command line there sudo ntpdate -u time.apple.com

and try again, you are good to go... It works for me, I believe it will for you too

I had the same issue, now i've solved it easily.

My macbook pro 15 inches Core i7 was out of battery (Broken) that's why the date wasn't updated then i could not be connected to server, so I applied the process below:

Start your mac pressing Command R for 20 seconds, when recovery utility is able, open terminal and type the actual date on the next command:

date 0204100518

Was on feb (month 02) day 4 (04) at 10:05 am (1005) year 2018 (18), then press enter and that's it, just go to install os x without any problem. I hope it works for you too.

I just met the same problem today.

The solution is go to the top right corner and click the WIFI connection, choose the correct network and enter your password. Once it shows connection, try again the whole process and it will go through.

When I started the system (with the alt key holding down), I already selected with network connection and enter the password. But it seems that the system did not use the network settings you specify when you select the recovery disk. So you have to do it again when you see the starting options.

Hope it helps for other users.

the easiest way to do this as well if you don't want to manually set the date/time is open the terminal utility (as stated before)

and type this ntpdate -u time.apple.com

OR sudo ntpdate -u time.apple.com

that's what I had to do, so it would sync up to apples servers and start my recovery install.

Hi there,

I had same problem, which my mac didnt have a battery at the time, but easy fix though try this:

When in recovery mode open a terminal window from

“Utilities” at the top menu

Once its open type this command in to sync with apple servers ntpdate -u time.apple.com

Once thats done exit terminal and just proceed the recovery should work howp it helps

I had this same issue. In the extreme upper right hand corner of your screen, you will see the wireless icon. Click on that icon and connect to a wireless network. Then it worked perfectly. I hope it helps.