Troubleshooting Internet Recovery Mode on iMac with Outdated Certificate

My dad’s iMac, a late 2011 model running Mac OS X Lion, had been unused for some time, leading to an expired certificate. This caused an error message to appear, stating “Your clock is ahead of time.” Determining that the certificate was out of date, I attempted to update it from a website, but to no avail. So, I decided to perform a factory reset of the machine.

I started the iMac in recovery mode and proceeded to delete the volume using Disk Utility. However, when I tried to reinstall Mac OS X Lion, an error message appeared: “Can’t download the additional components needed to install Mac OS X.” Furthermore, when attempting to boot the machine, it only displayed a blank white page. Booting in recovery mode redirected me to internet recovery mode.

I found a website that offered four troubleshooting steps, but none of them solved the problem. Additionally, I encountered difficulties while creating a bootable USB flash drive to install Mac OS. Following a guide for Windows users, I ensured that the USB was formatted as GPT (GUID Partition Table), but the error message persisted: “This disk doesn’t use the GPT partition scheme.”

I stumbled upon a video where it was suggested to access Disk Utility, click “View All Devices,” select the hard disk or USB, and then choose the GPT scheme. However, I did not have the option to select the GPT scheme since I could only access internet recovery mode.

Despite spending several hours troubleshooting, I could not resolve the issue and remain stuck in internet recovery mode.

If anyone could provide assistance, it would be greatly appreciated.