sd card on iMac not working with el capitan

Sorry about that, had posted once, and forgotten so did it for on other person.

You should not have to do this. Apple should start by issuing a statement such as the following. "To all frustrated users having issues with sd cards not reading since the installation of El Capitan; we know there is a problem ! We are looking into the problem , but in the meantime you may like to try the following fixes just in case your problem is not the same". Now that would be the start of good customer service. I for one bought my mac due to its photo capabilities and the simple insertion of an sd card to get results. The ability to leave an sd card in the slot and come back and forward to it at will was paramount in my decision making process. Since the installation of El Capitan my pc is not able to perform as it was originally intended. I have tried to be helpful by trying to fix myself but like others have just become frustrated. I would like to think Mr Cook will read this note and tell his staff to issue a note similar to my afore mentioned so that at least some angst can be taken out of the situation. Until then you have two choices. 1. Buy a new Mac and hope it does not have the same problem or 2. Buy a Microsoft pc as they do not seem to be having the same problem.

Don't try option 1.

I have a brand new Macbook Pro. While removing and re-inserting the SD card usually works, if I let my laptop go to sleep, it fails every time. I have no idea how "sleep" works in El Capitan, but I always have to restart my brand new Macbook Pro to mount the SD card after wake from sleep.

Yout may wish to wait in the store until the mac you have ugged the ad cards into has been through a few sleep cycles as if it as been rebooted and never had a sd card in the slot it will probably recognise it. The sleep cycle seems to be a key in this whole problem that needs eliminating as it keeps on cropping up. We all know that if we reboot or press the pram keys or wear blue glasses and a pink shirt that it works okay until! Until that is it goes to sleep. I am presently testing my Mac with an sd card in the slot with the the option to turn the hard disks off when possible is untucked and the option to put the computer to sleep is disabled. This means that only the screen saver will be enabled. The annoying part about this is that Apple may already know this will or won't work. By that I mean their employees buy the same macs as us and use sd cards and so must be going through the same issues. We could not be that unlucky. Anyway I will post the results tomorrow. The last step will be to disable all power saving options. Once I have taken all these steps..

Congratulations-I believe you have solved the SD card recognition problem !

At your suggestion I set the Computer Sleep at "Never", left the Display Sleep at 15 minutes,

left the daily Computer Wake Up Time and Shut Down times the same.

Inserted the SD card-which was recognized, with the icon appearing on the desktop and the computer then

opened Photo.

Really appreciated your input and mentioning that your brand new laptop, once it went to sleep

would then not recognize your SD card. Mine is an older 2009 iMac model, so if this fix worked with mine

it should work with many others.

Hopefully Apple will in the far distant future fix the problem, but I doubt it.

Glad it worked for you. Didn't for me.

As in my post above, some very smart folks OUTSIDE Apple have figured it out:

After some time try to fix USB ports on El Capitan, I just realize that 10.11 has a new mechanism to constraint the USB ports to your SMBIOS. If your Intel USB ports work just fine (without GenericUSBXHCI) but stop working on 10.11, it's probably your ports are not defined in SMBIOS.

The ports may work after you change to another SMBIOS with suitable ports, but you can edit the ports for your SMBIOS.

But their solution is beyond my ability to apply. It would be nice if Apple would help!!!!

Okay as i stated yesterday i would test the power saving options and delete them one by one. So last night i untucked both the options to let my hard disks sleep and to let my computer sleep. This did not work and over a period of time the sd card was no longer being seen by the mac. and red setting the card was to no avail. So......now i am am turning off the option to let the display sleep. If you are following me on this make sure you turn down the brightness. a. to save money and b. to prolong the life of your monitor. Now i must make the observation that at no tim yet have i been contacted by the Apple Care community or their technicians. This solely based my own detective work. Whilst this is sad it will go a long way to eliminating the scope of what we we as the end users can do. I know their people are watching as they did take down one of my previous posts as they described it as a rant. That may be there are times when these things can get you to this state. And it mustn't be forgotten that John Cleese went on to make a nice living after thrashing his car with a tree branch when it would not start. I just hope that Tim Cook has some empathy and will help us all remove this issue or at the very least acknowledge there is an issue. Anyway will report back later as to how the trial went.

Okay so far so good... with all power saving options disabled the sd card is still being recognised. It is 7:20pm here in Australia so i will wait until the morning now before i show any signs of joy. Hopefully it is just the screen saver that is the problem as you will now know i have tried the other options, and we can just disable this option whilst working.

cheers

OOkay everybody it is now 12 hrs ago since I turned off the screensaver having turned off all the other power saving options off And voila the sad card is still being recognised. So for the next part of the test I will leave the screensaver option turned off and turn back on the other options one by one staring with "send my computer to sleep". By the way had a call from a Tim Cook. He was very appreciative of all my efforts and said he would be sending me anew Mac as a reward. Whatever you do though, do t plug a darn sad card into it he said. Lol . In preparation for the problem being having to leave the screen saver on continuously I have started to get quotes in for a couple more solar panels and a on the wall Tesla battery.

OOkay, I have immediately hit a snag. ...you cannot turn on "put my computer to sleep" and leave the screensaver turned to never they are either both on or both off. So the only thing I can now test is to turn back on the option "send my hard disks to sleep when possible" and leave the computer to sleep option and screen saver set at "never" . So here goes and I will report back later with the findings. Cheers

It's turn off put my computer to sleep and can leave screen saver at whatever time you want.

The latest update on testing. It would now appear that i can leave the setting "let hard disks sleep when possible does not have an effect on the sd card as it is still in view and running okay. So without a fix from Apple it would appear that the best fix for this issue for me is to turn off the screen saver which in turn stops the computer from going to sleep. Now remember this may not work for all versions of mac desktops or laptops and notebooks but it does work on my 2009 desktop. So do your own testing and see if you get the same result. As yet i have still not been contacted by anybody from the Apple technical team other than to remove one of my posts. So hopefully they are monitoring this testing and may join us at some point. cheers

I have 2014 Imac, mid 2012 Macbook Pro. SD Card readers do not work since El Capitan install. I've tried multiple sd cards. I've done some of the restarting...and resets - does not work. I'm on 10.11.3. Frustrated. grrr.

Helo Leslie,

SD CARD & EL CAPITAN

I did 2 suggested things first that seem to work for some people (but not me)

SMC RESET

Shut down computer

Unplug power cord from both wall & computer

Wait 15 seconds

Reattach the power cable into the computer and into the wall

Wait 5 seconds

Press the power button to turn on computer

PRAM RESET

1. 1. Shut down computer
2. 2. Locate the following keys on the keyboard:

Command,Option,P & R. You will need to hold these keys down simutaneously

in step 4

1. 3. Turn on the computer
2. 4. Immediately press and hold (before the grey screen appears) all 4 above keys .
3. 5. Continue to hold those keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the

startup chime for the second time.

For some people this has worked, for me it didn't, but what did work after doing the above was:

At Bitsoftthings suggestion I set the Computer Sleep at "Never", left the Display Sleep at 15 minutes,-left the daily Computer Wake Up Time and Shut Down times the same.

Inserted the SD card-which was recognized, with the icon appearing on the desktop and the computer then opened Photo.

Really appreciated his input and mentioning that his brand new laptop, once it went to sleep would then not recognize your SD card. Mine is an older 2009 iMac model, so if this fix worked with mine

it should work with many others.

Hope this works for you.

You may find your journey wasted if on finding the sd card is recognised you do not wait until the laptop or computer hours to sleep as this appears to be where the issue is. By this I mean that once you device goes to sleep, on awakening it won't remember the sd card and you will have to reboot the device. As I have posted previously, if you want to be able to access your ad card over several hrs but you may have to leave the pc or lap top to do something else then go into settings, then power saving and set all settings to never. This I have found to always work. I am surprised that he apple support team are not advising people to use this method as all other methods work until the computer goes to sleep again. So try my method first as you may just save a wasted trip. Failing that you may wish to wait for the next version of IOS ammusing called LSD. Get it!