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Old MacBook Pro (mid-2011) running OS X Sierra was out of commission as the power supply had gone bad. I got a new power supply and fired it up. I was greeted with a warning from Chrome that it would no longer be updated unless I updated the OS. Trying to stream something, got an error about enabling DRM, which apparently needs the newer Chrome version.

According to Apple support pages this machine should be able to run High Sierra.

I downloaded the High Sierra installer and ran it. After about an hour, it exited and said the OS could not be installed. It said I could restart, or I could restart and hold the D key to run diagnostics. I did the diagnostic restart, ran all the tests, and it said it identified no issues.

When I restarted though, I quickly got a kernel panic, and then it just went in a reboot-panic-reboot loop. So I booted to internet recovery. It brings up the screen that says click to continue setting up High Sierra, but then a few seconds later I get a dialog box saying "The recovery server could not be contacted".

I verified that it was connected to the internet (it's on the same wi-fi I'm using to post this) and I also used the terminal to reset the system time...no difference. I've been hitting continue periodically for the last several hours and I always get the same message.

I ran the disk utility and it said there were no issues. I also used the network utility to verify that I can ping google, so it appears the network connection is working. I checked the Apple server status page and they seem to indicate everything is up and running.

So what else can I try? This machine does not appear to have a recovery partition on the disc. Probably a remnant of it being a dual apple/windows machine some years back.

jerH
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  • JerH - do you have another Mac you can work with? If so, what OS is it running? Or a Windows PC? – Tetsujin May 23 '23 at 17:15
  • @Thinkr - we can probably lose it. Sierra just can't find the store, so we have to go another way round. There are some tricks, but it may depend what machine we have to work with. I'm still trying hard to keep https://apple.stackexchange.com/q/309399/85275 curated, but our own David Anderson has some brilliant methods for a lot of this, some of which I've linked from there – Tetsujin May 23 '23 at 17:17
  • This is the only mac I have access to...everything else is windows or iPad. I had found that article...I verified the network connectivity via the network utility and I reset the time via the terminal. Now that I'm in this doom boot loop I can no longer access the app store. So it's looking like trying to download and build a bootable USB drive is my best bet huh? – jerH May 23 '23 at 17:25
  • @Tetsujin Okay. I have delete the comment. And yes, I've seen this amazing post of yours popping up on the frontpage whenever updates were made - really helpful contribution to the site, well done. ;) – Thinkr May 23 '23 at 17:31
  • jer - I'm really not the expert on this - I was fine a few years ago… but so much of the underpinning has changed since. I've just checked on a 2012 Macbook pro currently running Mojave & it can get to the store to pull Internet Recovery. I'm not yet certain where the break-point on that is, but I think it's High Sierra, which is why you can't reach it. Anyway… David Anderson has a method for building a USB on Windows. It's complicated & we'll possibly need him to confirm this will still work since Apple moved & changed all the installer files :\ – Tetsujin May 23 '23 at 17:37
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    [cont'd] It's linked from my answer posted above. OSes up to Sierra can be downloaded directly. Anything since needs the App Store. That's where I have a huge knowledge gap. idk how you can get to the installer for High Sierra if you can't reach the App Store. – Tetsujin May 23 '23 at 17:41
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    Thanks! I may scrounge around and see if one of my kids has a friend with a mac we can borrow for a few hours to make some bootable media...that seems easier – jerH May 23 '23 at 17:48
  • jer - wish you luck. Report back if you have anything else. This has got complex in recent years. – Tetsujin May 23 '23 at 18:09
  • So far, not so good. Following directions here I was going to try to create a High Sierra bootable USB drive using a borrowed MacBook Pro. However the new MBP is too new, and so I couldn't get High Sierra through the app store. So I googled around and found a utility here that said you could use it to download the full installer. However it indicates you should get a single ~5gb .app file for the installer, but I get a folder with 5gb spread across many files. So I still don't know how to get the installer app. – jerH May 23 '23 at 21:44
  • Is the Mac you can use Intel or Apple silicon? If it's Intel, you can build a High Sierra USB using MDS, linked in my answer. [I haven't figured out how to build anything older than Big Sur on an M1.] I don't have much experience with the dosdude methods. The createinstallmedia methods seem to be partially broken on older OSes with the recent installer changes Apple made, though the links to David Anderson's work is perfect for OSes up to Sierra; untested beyond that. Might be worth a shot if all else fails. – Tetsujin May 24 '23 at 07:15
  • A lot of this has been trial & error. I've built a myriad USBs in the past few weeks trying to get that answer up to date, but I only have certain Mac/OS combinations I can test. David is the in-house 'expert' on all of this - I just lumped myself with curating that existing answer… which has got a whole lot tougher over the past 5 years ;) – Tetsujin May 24 '23 at 07:15
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    @Tetsujin It's an Intel mac...I'll see what I can do with the MDS solution. An issue here is that Apples guidelines for creating bootable media assume you have a .app installer but the older OS download links they provide give you a .dmg disc image that, when restored, puts a .pkg file on the stick. I tried using TransMac but the resulting USB drive wasn't bootable – jerH May 24 '23 at 12:29

2 Answers2

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One possible procedure would be as follows:

  1. Create a bootable USB El Capitan or Sierra installer. This can be done from either Windows or macOS (OS X). However, macOS (OS X) does not require third party tools and Windows does. You can try using Create a bootable installer for macOS, but recently I have had better success using this answer. The answer can also be adapted for use with Sierra.
  2. Boot from the installer.
  3. Partition the internal drive into two Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volumes of approximately equal size. I prefer to use the diskutil command, but the Disk Utility application should be able to preform this task.
  4. Install the operating system on the second Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume.
  5. Install all updates.
  6. Goto How to download macOS and follow the instructions for getting the Install macOS High Sierra application.
  7. Use the Install macOS High Sierra application to install High Sierra on the first Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume.
  8. While booted to High Sierra, remove the second Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume and reclaim the free space back to the first volume. Again, I prefer using the diskutil command over the Disk Utility application.
David Anderson
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  • Sneaky… I like it ;)) – Tetsujin May 24 '23 at 11:01
  • I just made a Sierra stick using your first method from the https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/389830/85275 link. I've separated out the actual Terminal commands into a plain text file so they can be re-used, copy/paste [it's a bit of a mind-f*** getting the individual component names absolutely correct; you have to poke inside stuff to see where it's called macOS Sierra & where not etc.] Is there anywhere useful for it to go? – Tetsujin May 24 '23 at 15:46
  • There is a Sierra version that is not quite finished. (Some formatting and images need to be updated.) I have not figured out how to put the website back into Ask Different or whether I should even try. – David Anderson May 24 '23 at 17:55
  • These are really useful resources - especially now many of the old 'createinstallmedia' instructions will fail. I'm with you on any plan to bring these more to the public's attention. Maybe bring it up in chat, see what the mods think might be a good approach. My own 'how to get old macOS' has been creaking at the seams a long time & I don't have the chops or resources to test all alternatives. Today I've managed to add Sierra & High Sierra to my stock of VMs… but I'm still not certain what that has gained me. – Tetsujin May 24 '23 at 18:19
  • This is what I wound up doing, although there was a hiccup where a 16 GB thumb drive told me it was out of space while executing the cp -rp /Volumes/esd/Packages /Volumes/Install\ El\ Capitan/System/Installation piece. But once I ran with a 32 GB drive I was able to install Sierra, partition the drive, install High Sierra through the app store, then delete the Sierra partition. Only downside (which may have been inevitable after the original OS installation crashed) is that I lost EVERYTHING on the HDD – jerH May 26 '23 at 14:11
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The problem seems to be that the https certificate of the catalog expired: https://mrmacintosh.com/how-to-fix-the-recovery-server-could-not-be-contacted-error-high-sierra-recovery-is-still-online-but-broken/#more-8092 Here is the solution which worked for me (as described in the link).

  1. Once in recovery, click "Reinstall macOS"

  2. Select Window -> Installer Log

  3. Click the Continue button in the macOS High Sierra window. It will stall again and display "Could not contact server"

  4. ~~Accept your fate and buy a new macbook~~ Check in the error messages. There should be something like "Failed to load catalog https://swscan.apple.com"... Copy that line (Edit->Copy).

  5. Close the "Reinstall macOS" window and go back to the main menu.

  6. Open Terminal (Utilities->Terminal)

  7. Paste the line you copied, select only the URL and copy it again.

  8. Now type in the command:

    nvram IASUCatalogURL="[copied URL]"

, but remove the "s" in "https"

The command should now look somewhat like this:

nvram IASUCatalogURL="http://swscan.apple.com/content/catalogs/others/index-10.13-10.12-10.11-10.10-10.9-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog"
  1. Press Enter. Go back to the main menu and click "Reinstall macOS"

It should work now.

singleanswer
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