Hello everyone,
I’m having a persistent issue installing macOS Monterey, where the installer is always detected as corrupted, even after multiple clean downloads.
My setup
Host OS: Windows 10 x64
Target: Hackintosh
Bootloader: OpenCore
WiFi/BT card: BCM94352Z
SSD: SATA, detected after using AHCIPortInjector.kext
USB drives tested: 16 GB and 4 GB
macOS version: Monterey
What I already tried
Downloaded macOS Monterey RAW image from Olarila – Vanilla Images
Verified the download completed fully
Flashed the RAW image using Balena Etcher (Etcher warns about corruption at the end)
Re-downloaded the image multiple times
Used different USB drives
Tried both offline installer and Recovery
Set system date manually in Recovery
Confirmed the SSD is visible in Disk Utility
The problem
No matter what I do, the installer always shows:
“This copy of macOS is damaged and can’t be used to install macOS.”
Even after re-downloading the RAW image from Olarila Vanilla Images, the issue persists.
Limitations
I do NOT have access to a real Mac
I cannot use a virtual machine
Internet during Recovery is unreliable (WiFi not available in Recovery, Ethernet also failing)
My questions
Is there any known issue with Olarila Monterey RAW images when created from Windows?
Could Balena Etcher be causing false corruption or writing issues with macOS RAW images?
Is there a recommended tool or method on Windows to flash Monterey installers more reliably?
Could this error be related to OpenCore configuration (SecureBootModel, SIP, etc.) rather than the image itself?
Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.