"Recovery server could not be contacted" Error Message

Restart your laptop, after the chime, press Command + R. You will likely have a globe that will prompt you to log to a network, choose your network and wait for it to get to the next screen. When you get to the recovery screen, look for Terminal and follow these instructions:

Type the following commands;

date 1112203217

which is November 12th 20:32 2017.

Just use the your correct time. That's my local time. If it still does not work;

type the following:

csrutil disable

reboot

and repeat the process above after restarting. Hope it works

Hi,

I just had this problem yesterday (October 26, 2018) and found a quick fix (today, October 27, 2018) on contacting the recovery server.

Check your internet connection first. (We usually have fast internet connection using wired lan, just re-plug it or use a fast wifi internet)

Then you need to update/set your date using the terminal. On the terminal, type ntpdate -u time.apple.com then hit enter. Wait for the command to be executed then close the terminal once finished.

Try to install the OS again.

I hope this helps. It worked for me.

If not, you can check out the following:

High Sierra update error: The Recovery Server could not be contacted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy3SLxT4uH4

Best regards,

Adrian.

🙂😝

d4ma7or wrote:

What I had to end up doing was recovery booting , open disk utility and completely nuke everything but the recovery partition. Then boot back up into internet recovery mode. This takes forever but eventually you will get back to the recovery menu and from there just reinstall OSX , it will look like it’s hung up on 5 or 6 minutes or whatever but eventually it will finish. It might take a couple hours. Just wait it out and it will reformat your hard drive and your system will be like new. Oh, and you’ll lose any saved data so before you do this try to move your data around with the command line back in recovery mode.(look up copying files via terminal).

Click ‘reinstall macos’ before you hit continue, look at the too to see if your wifi is actually connected. Most likely it won’t be. Connect to wifi and then continue.

in case anyone still has this problem, THE SOLUTION is you need to connect to wifi!!!! server can't be contacted because you probably aren't connected to a wifi network. once you connect to wifi IT WILL WORK (at least it did for me)

In the recovery window mac does not connect to wireless by default. On the top right click on wireless icon, connect to your network then give it a try again. As the other user suggested I also set the date thru terminal before installing. It worked for me.

Correcting the date/time did not correct the issue for me. What did was;

1. Create a new admin user

2. Log off as the current user

3. Log back in using the new admin account

4. Go to the Applications folder and run the installation

Hope this helps. -=V=-

I had the same issue after I wiped the drive on my MacBook Pro. When you wiped the drive you selected the wrong format. All you need to do is simply go to disk utilities and erase the drive again, but this time select APFS (Encrypted) rather than just APFS. You may now click Reinstall macOS High Sierra. Side note, make sure you have internet connection in your status bar.

You are probably not connected to the Internet. You may need to sign in every time you do the Command R. (There is no prompt!). So the message "the recovery server could not be contacted", really means you are not online or connected to the internet.

In some cases, your hosts file may prevent access to update server. Check your /etc/hosts file and make sure that you are not blocking the following servers:

127.0.0.1 swscan.apple.com

127.0.0.1 swquery.apple.com

127.0.0.1 swdownload.apple.com

127.0.0.1 swcdn.apple.com

127.0.0.1 swdist.apple.com

When I got the error, I noticed that I’d been disconnected from the Wi-Fi (top right), so you might need to reconnect to your Wi-Fi network

Check your WiFi connection. That's all it took for me.

This discussion string is misleading—Apple shows that their servers being busy "solved" this problem. Jo's answer here solved the problem for me. It seems if your computer does not have the correct date and time it can't properly connect to the server. Thanks Jo. This worked.

This totally worked for me. Your mouse won’t work (as no WiFi yet) so just start typing and using scroll keys on keyboard to select your WiFi, then select recovery HD. It takes you through the process from there. Thanks for solution.

The UTC time wasn’t an issue for me. It is something to do with age of the MacBook and the EFI partition. I tried to run a Windows 10 USB and cleaned all partitions including EFI, then quitted the installation. Restarted the OS X recovery, and the connection to the server was fine but the OS X given was Mountain Lion, the original version shipped with the device. I am planning to upgrade the OS X later.