User profile for user: oldgit9
oldgit9 Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

Unable to log into iCloud or access the internet using iMac

This is a weird one and sorry in advanced for the long message.


I have been gifted an iMac A1419 (late 2013). The previous owner mentioned, that the "hard drive had become corrupt and he had to wipe and reinstalled the OS". When i turned on the iMac, it would fail to fully boot and error out when on the OS logo.


I booted into the recovery mode menu (Command & R), in disk utility, i erased the drive. I connected the iMac to the my router vie ethernet. Back in the recovery mode menu, i selected reinstall OS X. After going through all the steps, it had reinstalled Mountain Lion with no issues. Going through the set, when iCloud asked for my log in details, it would error out with "Error, can not sign you in at this time". So i skipped logging into iCloud and carried on setting up the iMac. Everything looked normal and correct.


After opening Safari, it would not load any websites i entered. I checked the Network settings and the iMac was connected to the internet (green dot in the ethernet tab). I opened "Network utility" and in the "Info" tab, in the "Interface Information" section, it had all the relevant info. in the "Transfer Statistics" section, in "Sent Packets - 524", "Sent Errors - 0", "Recv Packets - 955", "Recv Errors - 0". In the "Ping" tab, i entered google.com and pressed "Ping". 10 pings were sent and 10 pings were received with zero errors.


In "System Preference", i clicked on iCloud and entered in my details. Again, i would get a "You can't log in at this time" error. i have the previous owners log in details and enter that. It gave the same error message.


Thinking that it could have been a bad install, i wiped the hard drive and reinstalled Mountain Lion and i got the same error message when trying to sign into iCloud during set up. After set up, i removed the ethernet cable and connected via Wi-Fi. Confirmed that the iMac was connected correctly (green dot) and checked info and ping in the "Network Utility" and all were as expected. But again, couldn't log into the iCloud or access an website via Safari.


To make sure that the iMac has the correct settings to connect to the internet, i checked the settings on my MacBook Pro and i can confirm, all of the settings were the same (except for the IP and MAC address of the devices).


Thinking that there was an issue with the Mountain Lion install, i done a fresh install of "Yosemite" and had the same issue. Then done a fresh install of "El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra" and all have the same issue (after wiping the hard drive each time).


Done some research on Google and YouTube and in the "Advanced" settings on both Wi-Fi and Ethernet, in "TCP/IP" tab, all of the addresses were correct, clicked on "Renewed the DHCP Lease". I pressed "OK" and then "Apply" and tried to connect again and still the same error. Back in the "Network Settings" "Advanced", in the "DNS" tab, i entered my router ip address and 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4, 1.1.1.1. Pressed "OK" and "Apply" and tried to log into iCloud and again, the same error.


I have wiped the hard drive and reinstalled Mountain Lion and tried everything again and i still can not log into the iCloud, but i can ping websites.


Any suggestions on how i can fix this?


[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Earlier Mac models

Posted on May 15, 2025 9:58 AM

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User profile for user: g_wolfman
g_wolfman
User level: Level 4
3,472 points

Posted on May 15, 2025 6:43 PM

Mountain Lion is so old that it doesn't support any modern web security standards - and almost all the root certificates it comes with will be expired. That alone explains most of your web site issues.


That computer can be upgraded to macOS Catalina, which you should do. You may be able to do it manually by going into the Terminal and running the command:

sudo softwareupdate -ia

and in fact you may need to do that regardless in order to get some security updates that may allow the App Store to work properly again. The earlier the macOS or OS X version you are starting from, the more you may need to run updates to get even basic functionality that allows you to get to next steps.


You should then manually update the ISRG X1 and X2 certificates here: https://letsencrypt.org/certificates/, by downloading the .pem certificate files, installing them into your keychain and manually setting them to be trusted.


That will get Safari working well enough to download a workable browser - Firefox, Waterfox, Librewolf or any other good Firefox fork will work. Some decent Chromium forks like Brave work too if they are more to your taste.


Since the laptop I am currently writing this post on is running Catalina, I can guarantee that Catalina can log into Apple (at least using Firefox). However, if you have newer devices running newer macOS or iOS versions including certain security features, you may not be able to use all features. e.g., if you have Contact Key Verification turned on in newer devices, you absolutely will not be able to log into Messages or FaceTime on Catalina.


You can get most iCloud features working, though.



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User profile for user: g_wolfman
g_wolfman
User level: Level 4
3,472 points

May 15, 2025 6:43 PM in response to oldgit9

Mountain Lion is so old that it doesn't support any modern web security standards - and almost all the root certificates it comes with will be expired. That alone explains most of your web site issues.


That computer can be upgraded to macOS Catalina, which you should do. You may be able to do it manually by going into the Terminal and running the command:

sudo softwareupdate -ia

and in fact you may need to do that regardless in order to get some security updates that may allow the App Store to work properly again. The earlier the macOS or OS X version you are starting from, the more you may need to run updates to get even basic functionality that allows you to get to next steps.


You should then manually update the ISRG X1 and X2 certificates here: https://letsencrypt.org/certificates/, by downloading the .pem certificate files, installing them into your keychain and manually setting them to be trusted.


That will get Safari working well enough to download a workable browser - Firefox, Waterfox, Librewolf or any other good Firefox fork will work. Some decent Chromium forks like Brave work too if they are more to your taste.


Since the laptop I am currently writing this post on is running Catalina, I can guarantee that Catalina can log into Apple (at least using Firefox). However, if you have newer devices running newer macOS or iOS versions including certain security features, you may not be able to use all features. e.g., if you have Contact Key Verification turned on in newer devices, you absolutely will not be able to log into Messages or FaceTime on Catalina.


You can get most iCloud features working, though.



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User profile for user: oldgit9
oldgit9 Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

May 19, 2025 2:34 PM in response to g_wolfman

Thanks for the reply and sorry for the delay in my reply.


manually installing the cert's did help in getting safari and more importantly, iCloud. i could then download the next OS X and concurrently install the OS X's, until i got to 10.15. it wasn't plain sailing and i had a lot of wipes, re-installs etc. but i did manage to get to the latest OS X, after a few too many update install crashes.


thanks again for you help.

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User profile for user: MrHoffman
MrHoffman
Community+ 2025
User level: Level 10
144,009 points

May 15, 2025 8:33 PM in response to oldgit9

Boot Recovery again, this time with Command-Option-R, erase again, and re-install the newest supported macOS.


Use macOS Recovery on an Intel-based Mac - Apple Support


That’ll get you the newest supported version, assuming the hard disk isn’t failing.


This iMac will be exceedingly slow, if it is the 8 GB HDD configuration.


If it's the 8 GB / HDD configuration, an external SSD can work around some of that slow.


It’s an iMac 27” model, so the memory can also be upgraded. Not thst I’d spend much on this iMac.

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User profile for user: oldgit9
oldgit9 Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

May 19, 2025 2:29 PM in response to MrHoffman

Thanks for the reply and sorry for the delay in my reply.


the info unfortunately didn't work.....fist time....but in the end, i did manage to get the iMac up to 10.15. threre were a lot of resets etc. when applying the updates in 10.15, it kept on failing. but persistence paid off and it finally done the update.


thanks again fore the info.

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Unable to log into iCloud or access the internet using iMac

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