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When doing a clean re-installation of El Capitan (highest supported version) from a bootable USB on an older Mac (MBP, 15-inch, Late 2008), I get this error:

An unexpected error occured while signing in.

AMD-Action:authenticate:SP

The error shows up, while logging in with the Apple ID into the App Store in the installer.

  • I tried with different Apple IDs,

  • Also tried running these commands in the Recovery Terminal and restarting:

    csrutil clear

    csrutil enable

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  • Instead of, or in addition to, saying "on an older Mac", provide the exact hardware information of the model Mac you're working with.
    – user3439894
    Feb 22, 2017 at 13:33
  • Ok, added into the question
    – Peter Gerhat
    Feb 22, 2017 at 13:50

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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The problem was that the old Mac did not have its date set correctly.

  1. Hold Option (ALT) + Command + R at Mac startup to start internet recovery

  2. Going into Utilities > Terminal starts the recovery terminal

  3. Run date mmddHHMMyy - this solves the problem (date must be in PST!)

  4. Run csrutil enable

  5. Run csrutil clear

  6. Exit the recovery terminal and continue OS X installation normally.

Here is the full step-by-step solution to solve the problem.

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  • Happened to me on an older MacBook which I didn't boot up in a while when trying to do an update. El Capitain was already installed though, so I didn't need to go into recovery mode. Correcting the time was enough.
    – David Ongaro
    May 29, 2017 at 20:25
  • Setting the time also worked for me. Though had to use PDT due to the time of the year.
    – sbk
    Sep 19, 2017 at 7:56
  • Just to add to Peter Gerhat's answer above (I don't have enough rep to comment on it directly): If you have two-factor auth enabled and you hit this message, change the date as instructed, exit recovery entirely, reboot again, then proceed as normal.
    – Chris Chandler
    Nov 17, 2017 at 14:34
  • From Chris Chandler: "If you have two-factor auth enabled and you hit this message, change the date as instructed, exit recovery entirely, reboot again, then proceed as normal."
    – JMY1000
    Nov 17, 2017 at 18:07
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For me, the problem was because I did not have access to the Shared folder under Users in the primary drive. When i changed permission for the Shared folder via 'Get Info>Folder permission>Set to read', the problem was resolved..

Hope this helps

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This is most likely related to two factor authentication. I was getting this error message when trying to download MacOS High-Sierra from an El-Capitan installation. What fixed the problem for me was to first download something else from the app store. I as then asked to authenticate with tfa and subsequently was allowed to download macos.

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