A user came in with their OS all garbaged up. It wouldn't start and when I used Target Mode and copied off documents and scanned the snot out of them I came up with a number of viruses. Afterward I booted into OSX Utilities (CMD + R) and erased the drive.
I then attempted to reinstall the OS but it wouldn't work, I can't remember the error anymore. I tried to install High Sierra but it gave me the message that it couldn't connect to any servers, even though I had internet-recovery booted.
I reformatted the drive to APFS format, no help. I got a USB of HS and same message.
I got a USB of Sierra instead, used it successfully on another machine (2011 MBAir) reformatted this drive to Mac OSX Extended and it began but about 2/3 of the way through stopped and gave me the "installer payload failed signature test" error.