Internet Recovery T2 Intel Mac is broken

Question

Created Mar ’21

Replies 5

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Participants 3

Hello,

can anyone, with a blank SSD, reinstall via Internet Recovery Big Sur on an Intel Mac?

Usually I get the error "An error occurred loading the update.".

Then looking into the logs from the installer I see with various files, after the 12 gigabytes have been downloaded, errors such as: "CRC mismatch; got: 0x3372a3be expected: 0x922f74d8 for file AssetData/boot/EmbeddedOSFirmware.pkg".

Also all other files come here randomly as errors.

But if the installer works, you are guaranteed to get the error "An error occurred preparing the software update." afterwards.

On an empty Mac, with a 1 terabyte SSD, of which, after the 12 gigabyte image is downloaded, mostly 980 gigabytes are still free.

I contacted Apple support and never received a response.

Best,
Martin

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Answer 1

MrCommunistGen OP

Apr ’21

For what it is worth, I'm having the same error when I try to use Internet Recovery on a 2018 15" Macbook Pro to install Big Sur.

I can cleanly install Catalina using a bootable USB created via the Terminal, but when I upgrade to Big Sur, the upgrade fails and leaves the machine in an unbootable state. From there, if I try to use internet recovery to install Big Sur it also fails. At this point I've probably performed the installation process a dozen times with a few variations over the last several days to no avail.

Interestingly, I also tried to create a bootable Big Sur USB install drive using Apple's instructions, but the media creation fails at the end when trying to "bless" the drive, and ultimately the drive isn't bootable.

It almost seems like there's something wrong with the Big Sur installer that's currently hosted on Apple's servers... but I can't imagine how that would happen and then go largely unnoticed for any significant period of time.

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Answer 2

mnin OP

Apr ’21

I found a weird solution: create a "Mac Deploy Stick" including latest version of Big Sur and enable erase the drive using the stick.

But it's still not fixed on Apple's site, after using the stick to reinstall Big Sur, everything is fine, so I think it must be an issue in the Big Sur Installer. And I was able to install previous version of macOS which was also running.

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Answer 3

mnin OP

Apr ’21

Still not able to just start internet recovery with 11.3 and perform a reinstall. Same issue.

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Answer 4

mnin OP

May ’21

Still not fixed with 11.4.

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Answer 5

Domon OP

Jul ’21

I'm experiencing exactly the same issue. ☹️

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