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.
bought used iMac, and trying to reinstall macOS High Sirrra, but keep saying The recovery server could not be contacted
mostly it means migration assistant (because let's face it, you are here trying to reinstall macos because migration assistant already failed for you and insisted on keeping a botched transfer of your main account and now will not let you try that again but instead wants you to send your real account to some made-up name that does not conflict with the botched initial transfer that is somehow really really important to preserve), anyway, where were we? right, reinstall macOS. Because Migration Assistant just got confused enough to toast your machine and you can't think of anything better than scrubbing it all and starting over, and like me you are frustrated that there seems no way to do that.
I am searching for the the jealously guarded really-really-wipe-my-machine-and-start-over option, and promise to update this post if i ever find it. They have hidden it well. Does this ever turn out ok?
The issue, is most likely, that their Apple ID is still assigned to this Mac.
Have them take a look at the following link to try to remove it:
What to do before selling or giving away your Mac - Apple Support
Hi I’m having the same problem and I’ve tried everything you guys have and it still says “recover server could not be contacted” what do I do ? I need to use my laptop for homework!
THE CORRECT TERMINAL COMMAND IS: ntpdate -u time.apple.com
Credit to levlaz here: https://gist.github.com/levlaz/16b63384bd5e1bee3593be0d91aedbd7
Full post below:
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.
ntpdate -u time.apple.com
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!
Ge to recovery menu (restart your machine and press cmd + R). when at the recovery window, look for terminal window, frome the recovery menu. if you can't find it, check under window. 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.
Just copy the above instructions as they are. Curtesy Jo Desmet
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
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.
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.
🙂😝
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).
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.
If you are still experiencing the issue, it is very likely that the Apple servers are busy processing download requests for other users. You may also see your installation time rise significantly but come down suddenly over time.
Ref. https://becomethesolution.com/blogs/mac/the-recovery-server-could-not-be-contact ed-mac-os-sierra
Question, every time I type that code in I press enter. I then close the window and try to download the OS again. After it still refuses to download i go back to terminal and the code is gone. what is the actual way to save the code in terminal because it keeps erasing it. Thanks.
SOLUTION:
1.Boot Mac while holding Command and R(enter recovery mode)
2.Once the loading bar appears you can let go of Command and R
3.Once at the recovery screen go to Utilites in the top menu Bar
4. Open Terminal
5. Type
ntpdate -u time.apple.com
6. Press enter, wait for a response, then go to Finder Quit Terminal
7. install Mac OS
8.Need more help? Check out the link below
REASON AND ISSUE:
The time on your Mac is off, mine was off by .00356 sec or something and this solved it
SOURCE:
https://becomethesolution.com/blogs/mac/the-recovery-server-could-not-be-contact ed-mac-os-sierra
The recovery server could not be contacted.
