iMac Pro (2017) with weird reinstall issue

[ukitconsultant]

Hi all,

I'm hoping someone can help. I have an iMac Pro 2017 which was pretty much maxed out for the time, and was working fine until two days ago. Suddenly was boot looping.

When trying internet recovery, I get -1008F as an error code which I don't recognise at all. That is with everything except mouse and keyboard plugged in. Same error on Wifi and Ethernet.

Oddly though, my Bootcamp which runs Windows 10, works absolutely fine.

I have removed the partition with macOS on it, but being unable to get into recovery of any description (Whenever I use the USB install of Monterey, it tries to use the internet recovery for some reason), I can't recreate it. Bootcamp is still working absolutely fine at this moment in time.

In fact, whenever I try anything other than bootcamp, it tries to load internet recovery. It was doing this before I removed the partition. Which I only removed because I ran out of ideas and couldn't think of what else to do, I assume I corrupted MacOS at some point, which is a shame.

SMC has been reset using unplug, hold power button for 15 seconds, plug in, wait 5 seconds then power on.
PRAM may not have been reset, although I have tried, but CMD + OPT + P + R on boot doesn't seem to do anything other than chime once.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I might be able to do?

 

[IWT]

A warm welcome to Mac-Forums and thank you for your post.

May I ask two related questions? What is the total storage capacity of your Mac's Internal Drive; and what is the total Free/Unused storage space?

I'm not talking about the partitions, but the entire Drive.

Ian

 

[ukitconsultant]

Hi Ian,

the drive is a 4TB drive. it was about 75% free space, split across 3 partitions (the EFI one, the macOS one 3TB) and a bootcamp one (1TB))

 

[ukitconsultant]

Speaking to apple -1008F means the Mac has activation lock switched on, which I have now disabled. However, I'm not 100% sure that is going to solve the issues, but who knows. Apple thinks it might be a hardware issue, but I wonder if the lock might take more than a few minutes to come off.

Has anyone ever experienced this before?

 

[IWT]

Thank you for replying and I'm sorry I was indisposed earlier.

There may be more to the Error 1008F than just the Activation Lock.

This is Apple's response to that error:

If your Mac starts up to error -1008F – Apple Support (UK)

Your Mac tried unsuccessfully to start up from macOS Recovery over the internet.

support.apple.com

As you will see, it deals with Recovery Mode and what to do to get into it when you get that error.

Ian

 

[ukitconsultant]

Hi Ian,

That is indeed the page Apple sent me. It is indeed an internet recovery issue, but I am completely unsure as to what else to do. In an act of desperation, I formatted the EFI drive this morning via Windows, which obviously means bootcamp won't boot anymore.

If it isn't activation lock, then what else would you suggest it might be? I really am not sure it's a hardware issue, and the drive now has just over 3TB of space which is completely blank, and no issues at all when it comes to checking the drive when I was in Windows.

I am hoping I can boot from a USB Drive which already has macOS installed on it, and bypass the drive itself, just in case the drive is somehow the issue, but I am really not 100% sure.

I am open to any and all suggestions at this point.

Christopher.

 

[ukitconsultant]

Interestingly, I installed MacOS on an external drive on my MacBook Pro, thinking I might be able to use that to swap it over to the iMac Pro and when I signed in I got an error, saying that it cannot activate iCloud. It appeared for around 2 seconds. But I am going to format and reinstall MacOS on that same machine to see if I can catch the error again.

Makes me think that the two are related

 

[ukitconsultant]

Something doesn't appear to be right here, I have just changed my appleid password, purely out of speculation that it might have something to do with it.

This may be turning into a software related issue rather than hardware, in which case, I might need to get this thread moved. I am somewhat worried, as I really want to avoid sending off my iMac Pro if I can avoid it, but I feel like I might have no choice.

 

[ferrarr]

CMD + OPT + P + R on boot doesn't seem to do anything other than chime once.

Hold for a total of 3 chimes.

 

[jasongoldworthy]

Something doesn't appear to be right here, I have just changed my appleid password, purely out of speculation that it might have something to do with it.

This may be turning into a software related issue rather than hardware, in which case, I might need to get this thread moved. I am somewhat worried, as I really want to avoid sending off my iMac Pro if I can avoid it, but I feel like I might have no choice.

hi maybe your mixing up the command for booting to internet recovery ?

try command option r all at the same time after chime and incase the keyboard isn't being detected try using a usb one.

and see how it goes.

also as Bob has said try doing a PRAM reset several times.


one more question here is does it ask you to select a wifi network ?

or are you connected via ethernet ?

I highly doubt its anything to do with your Apple ID but if you have removed the iMac from find my on another machine it should be able to sign in again with an Apple ID of anyone's