Since the beginning of 2023, macOS High Sierra Internet and local recovery broke. An investigation with OpenCore Legacy Patcher Co-Developer dhinak
Mid 2023, I started to see multiple posts about macOS 10.13 High Sierra recovery not working. We all know about the certificate expiring and date and time issues, but this issue was DIFFERENT. Near the end of 2023, I started investigating the issue. I was able to reproduce it every single time. Sure enough, Local hard drive command R and Internet Recovery are broken with the same “The Recovery Server Could Not Be Contacted” error. What does this mean and can it be fixed?
While I was able to identify the issue and reproduce it, I was not able to come up with an actual fix other than the #2 fix listed below and creating a macOS High Sierra Bootable install USB. Wonder if you only have 1 Mac and can’t create a recovery disk? You are stuck!
So I reached out to OpenCore Legacy Patcher co-author dhinakg. For those that don’t know dhinakg is an expert in all things involving Apple Software Update Server. After some time, he replied with the root issue and a perfect workaround solution! Jump to #1 for an explanation of what the problem is and # for the URL fix.
Thank You
I would like to thank dhinakg for helping me investigate this issue! You can follow him on twitter here = https://twitter.com/dhinakg
Up next? macOS Sierra Recovery install is also broken! who knows if we can also fix this issue.
Table of contents
- What is the root problem?
- How to fix the issue?
- Fix #1 Boot to a newer version macOS internet Recovery!
- Fix #2 Create a macOS High Sierra bootable installer USB
- Fix #3 Change the NVRAM Software Update URL