macOS High Sierra installer says "The recovery server could not be contacted." Why?

*Possible solution* This happened to me, and I tried resetting the date through terminal and made sure I was connected to wifi and neither helped. What DID work, was that a family member had High Sierra on a flashdrive that we were able to plug into the mac and install.

If that didn't work, we were going to have to try to reformat the drive. Thankfully we didn't. If you have a techie friend or family member- reach out to them!!!

Wanted to upgrade Macbook Air 6,2 from El Capitan to High Sierra. None of the remedies mentioned here worked for me. In the end I downloaded the full High Sierra Installer as described here: http://osxdaily.com/2017/09/27/download-complete-macos-high-sierra-installer/. Running that worked flawlessly.

I had this problem, too, with several attempts. Eventually, in App Store a "Software Update" popped up, one that was not there when I originally opened it (App Store). So, rather than pondering solutions to the High Sierra update problem, when it seems even Terminal workarounds aren't working for some, I began downloading the sizable update to El Capitan (nearly 900 Mb). That's taking a while today. Hopefully, I will get around the "recovery server" problem after that. I will try to update here once that happens, or if it doesn't.

WARNING: On another Mac, my primary laptop, I attempted to update to High Sierra in the usual, easy way it has always worked for me, and, for the first time in 30 years of using Macs, I had a system software failure that was disastrous. Stupid me, my backup did not have all my beloved files, and I was stuck without the latest version of my recovery software, and I had work I needed to get done. So I bit the bullet and reconfigured my drive. Oh, that was a mistake. I lost 1,000s of photos, my iTunes structure and ratings, etc, and much more. (So much for trying to be frugal; cost myself time and money.) So, be SURE you have a total and complete backup of the latest versions of all your photos, music, videos, files, user settings, applications, EVERYTHING, before you move to High Sierra. My point is: this UPDATE FAIL never happened to me before with a Mac in nearly 30 years. System updates have always been with ease.

I have the same problem, my system date is correct, i keep receiving

"The recovery server could not be contacted."

since yesterday (13 nov 2017) any idea ?

Alright, finally got to terminal and tried to update the date and it didn’t help. Are you telling me there is no solution to this and the Mac is unusable?

Please help! I just purchased a Used iMac and upon turning it on for the first time it went to Mac OS utilities. I checked disk utility and there were no issues but when I tried to reinstall Mac OS I got the same error message as this thread. Is there a way to access terminals from this page? Like I said I just received this so I’m not too sure what I’m doing or how to access a lot of things. Thanks. Hopefully it works. Supposed to be a present 😩

This did nothing to help

This did nothing for the problem for me......why don't we have a real solution from APPLE???? THis problem has stopped me from upgrading every day since introduction......*****

Thanks Psigram. I also was going from Yosemite to High Sierra and was getting the same issue. I am downloading Sierra now without issue.

Worked for me. Thanks.

Did your problem solve ?? Can u help me ? I have this problem

Help me pls , what did u do to solve this problem ?

Solved!

Thanks for your post! I was getting the error on my 13" 2010 MacBook and could not figure what was wrong.

Whats means “the recovery server could not be contacted” ..!!??

hello

firewall is disable.but I can't😟