"Recovery server could not be contacted" Error Message

hi guys . actually i had same issue and same error .

it happened for me when i downloaded update for macOs high sierra from app store and startet to update but at the middle of installing update . it gave me an error that you can not continue and things like that

but when i saw that my only choice is to use recovery installing i contacted with apple support ( actually they do their best )

actually you can solve this problem with one of this ways :

1- check your "date" time via Terminal by typing just date

because some times your date is not same as it should be and when you send request with server your time causes this error . and if your time was not correct search google and fix it

2- i'v heard from apple support you must just use wife or cable for updating ( i mean you can not share from you mobile phone for your laptop , but finally i updated my macOs via mobile hotspot) so try using wifi

3- try to use an internet which has a very good internet speed . (i think it's very important )

4- and this one is fantastic : i was connected to wife and it gave me same error , apple support said me turn your wifi on and off ( when you turn it on it must ask for wifi password again ,something like forgetting and again connecting) when i did this and entered password again and pressed continue and it worked( Boooom )

(but because of loosing my internet connection it gave a internet error and i had to do it again )

but this time when i restarted my computer and did all those things again . i didn't work . i think i tried maybe for 15 or 20 times and turning wifi on and off each time . but it wouldn't work . finally i was ****** i said let's do it once again and it worked (via hotspot)

5- so don' t give up ( i was busy with this error about 2 day )

i hope these things be able to help you if you have same problem ( i should mention that i had no hard drive problem and when i used "first aid" every thing was ok )

The problem for me was simply that WiFi wasn’t connected. Exit from the install menu and select “view help online” that will prompt for WiFi password - once you are connected you will be granted access.

I noticed my mac was not connected to the wireless network. After I connected it, the error was gone and the reinstall started...

Been having this issue and then realised I was no longer connected to the internet. Chose my connection, had to put in password again, and it started downloading!

Same thing happened to me. But later I realized that my Mac was not connect to the internet. Check the right upper corner, internet status. After reconnecting to the internet, reinstall started.

I just had this problem. Do a restart while holding Option. Ensure that your WiFi network is selected to give the system somewhere to look for the recovery server. Select your recovery drive for the startup.

And just to further clarify, use UTC, NOT your own time zone. If you don’t know what time it currently is in UTC use this: https://time.is/UTC

I just went through the same issue and couldn’t get past it until I used UTC time.

Thanks for the tip!

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).

This worked for me.

To reset your machine's time from Apple's time servers in the terminal enter the following command:

ntpdate -u time.apple.com

If you receive a permissions error, run the command as the superuser:

sudo ntpdate -u time.apple.com

Source: http://osxdaily.com/2012/07/04/set-system-time-mac-os-x-command-line/

Check to make sure you are connected to the internet. I got the same message and when I checked on network preferences, it was disconnected from my wifi for some reason. I reconnected and was then able to reinstall Mac OS High Sierra.

Thanks for posting and thank you all for helping!! This was very helpful. For some reason, I came this morning to turn my macbook pro on and I don’t know why but it wouldn’t load all the after the password step. So I looked up some ways to fix it and had to erase disk but the problem to reinstall remained. I found this post after trying for hours and learned how to use terminal windows from utility disk screen.. then learned how to correct the date ( don’t type his numbers lol, I was doing that at first, newbie :)) ... reconnect to wifi( It doesn’t automatically reconnect), and reinstall ( make take hours lol). Thank you!

I tried a few solutions here, none works. Turned out neither WIFI couldn't get an IP and can't connect to Apple Servers.

So I run a LAN cable from the router direct to the iMac and using Network Utility I was able to see the iMac was getting an IP and packets are flowing OK.

That solved my problem with the error.

@sirqaim Did you verify that the system date is correct, as discussed earlier in the thread? That solved the problem for me. The error message presented is erroneous -- it's not a "server busy" problem, despite what the computer says.