Q: EDIMAX wifi extender stopped working with El Capitan

Thanks DJ-LB... The steps you provided worked finally after trying so many drivers for my Edimax EW-7811un which the manufacturers. It is true that driver for 10.11 is no released but I expected the 10.10 driver somehow to work. Nevertheless, thanks a lot for the steps (wonder how it occurred to you to use Pacifist ?!!).

Great Work....!

I followed the steps, even uninstalled everything and re-installed using pacifist. But the wireless utility launches... bounces in the dock for a long time, then OS X says it is not responding..

On Network, the device says "Cable Unlugged"

Maybe try a different USB port if you have one.

Other thing you can do is unplug the USB, uninstall Network Utility and delete System Preferences ->Networks -> 802.11n WLAN Adapter.

Restart

And then reinstall the driver using Pacifist.

Restart

See if it works.

Probably you already tried, I though i mention it anyway incase it triggers other diagnostic.

the dock icon will bounce when the driver isn't loaded. To verify you have the correct driver, extract the Kext with pacifist to your desktop.

Then, from terminal, type

sudo chown -R root:wheel ~/Desktop/FILENAME.kext

sudo chmod -R 500 ~/Desktop/FILENAME.kext

sudo kextload ~/Desktop/FILENAME.kext

If that succeeds, run the utility again. If not there is a good chance you have the wrong driver for your stick.

Please provide more information on what usb stick and driver you're attempting if you're still stuck

Edit: also worth checking that you are unable to set ipv4 to dhcp in network settings where it says cable unplugged

802.11n WLAN Adapter. ?? i have "WiFi".. and it says "Not Connected", click on it and it says "Cable Unplugged"... nowhere does it mention "802.11n WLAN Adapter."

Maybe its renamed on your laptop. I have got ew-7811un and in network it says 802.11un by default.

Try deleting wifi after you uninstall the Network Utility...

I have the EW-7711MAC. There is no kext file in that driver..

The kext is the driver. If there is none then you're definitely looking at the wrong package, unless there's natively supported usb wireless nics that I've not heard about... I think the hackintosh community would throw a party if that were the case.

In order for the utility to function, the appropriate kext for your nic must be loaded, and the device must be added and configured as DHCP in network preferences (usually done automatically but sometimes requires manual configuration by clicking the plus, or even so much as deleting /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist and rebooting)

thanks it worked! thanks a million!

Hi DJ-LB, I'm impressed with how you get the USB wireless adapter to work on El Capitan.  I wonder if you know whether your method will work with USB wireless adapters from other manufacturers.  I'm asking this because the built-in wireless adapter in my MacBook Pro died and I want to replace it with a USB wireless adapter, but Edimax products are not common and difficult to get in Singapore, where I live.  Thank you.

I could never say for sure that a driver(kext) that works in an old version of Mac OS X will work in El Capitan, however...

let me long-windedly explain what that means(sorry @bloomk, greek time):

a kext is a kernel extension, the kernel being the software that talks to a computer's hardware, and the extension being the software that tells the kernel about a specific type of hardware (eg. usb wireless sticks).

most third party hardware companies provide their kernel extension as a pkg, or package file to make it simple for you to put the kext where the kernel sees it(it most likely installs to /System/Library/Extensions on old Mac OS X, or to /Library/Extensions for El Capitan). Some of these pkg "installers" will also install apps to /Applications, such as the wireless utility that edimax uses. the problem is that the pkg sometimes will fail or not install correctly if the version of Mac is not what it was intended for...

to find out if this failure is superficial or if the driver/kext really is not compatible, we have to move these files into place manually with a tool like Pacifist, then reboot and hope it worked. to verify, remember the name of the kext file you see in Pacifist and open About this Mac > System Report, scroll to the bottom and select Extensions, wait an eternity for the list to show up, then see that your kext file is in the list, and is loaded. if so, you win. you should be able to launch the wireless utility and it should function as expected

if telling Pacifist to "install to default location" doesn't work, you're still not finished. you can use Pacifist to install the kext manually to /Library/Extensions(which seems to be where they want 3rd party kexts in El Capitan- Apple must have taken a hint from the hackintosh community to separate Apple and non Apple kexts), and to install the wireless utility app to wherever you want. if after reboot it still doesn't work, then you can be extra sure its incompatible by running the steps I mentioned above where you extract the kext to the desktop and use the terminal to set permissions and manually load it. if the kext doesn't load, then I believe we've exhausted our options and must wait for the hardware vendor to give us a new driver

...so the bottom line: if the kext for any device is compatible with El Capitan, but the pkg installer from the vendor is not, then most likely all of these methods will allow you to use your device (eg. wireless card, tv tuner, sound card, usb nerf missle launcher, pci devices, you name it)

good luck with your hacks! if you get your device working, please post back with the type of card and which approach worked

sorry to say I just grokked what you said about csrutil. I'd expect most users would need to do/have done as JDWong suggests and disable it before attempting to install the wifi stick files

I am actually using Clover so my custom kexts live in the EFI partition, but for standard configurations of OS X it appears that one should follow steps such as those found here:

https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/mac/documentation/Security/Concep tual/System_Integrity_Protection_Guide/C…

command R at boot, and "csrutil disable" from terminal seem to be the ticket

I downloaded the driver and installed it using Pacifist.  There are 4 kext in the package, and I can see them in System Report.  However, it shows that they are not loaded, but each of them shows that it is loadable.  Does this look like the driver has been installed successfully?  If so, is it showing not loaded because I have not plugged in the wireless adapter?  By the way, I have not bought the wireless adapter as I want to make sure I can install the driver first.

The extensions have been installed it sounds like. You can manually test by running sudo kextload /path/to/installed/extension and probably will get nothing as output if it loaded, errors if it failed. You'll never know for sure until you've the usb stick plugged in. If it works, when you open profiler it will say it is loaded and thus is compatible, at which point the utility application should also work