El Capitan: USB Device Drawing Too Much Power

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

Hey everyone,

I've been hit with an issue on my 1,1 Mac Pro (running El Cap). Judging by posts all over the internet, lots of El Capitan users have been dealing with this issue - likely a software issue: from the notifications, an army of messages pop up saying that there is a USB Device Drawing Too Much Power; close the messages and they re-appear - one after the other; unplug everything except for the power and monitor and the messages still flood the notifications.

What concerns me the most, though, is how I've actually been on El Cap for some time and have only recently had this issue; and when trying to boot from my 10.8.3 disk, I get the same issue. I'm not spammed with messages, but I did get one message, and none of my USB ports ended up being disabled.

The thing with El Cap is that, not only does it spam you with messages, it disabled the USB ports as well. So, now, I have two of the three USB ports behind my Mac Pro disabled. What gives?

 

[filmak]

Also curious what kind of a USB problem/kind of attack was this?
Of course i'm sure you have done the obvious PRAM / SMC resets.
So, is it possible to remove for a minute the internal clock battery, and give a chance that perhaps MP forgets about the USB issue? and boot in 10.8 firstly.

 

[DeltaMac]

Bluetooth connects through the USB controller.
Does your MPro have a bluetooth card?
If yes, you could try reseating the bluetooth card.
If no bluetooth, then IDK.

Yes, my impression is that El Cap is really the issue. I do know that Apple lists USB as one of the areas that are monitored in the 10.11.2 betas. I have a mini, running the latest El Cap beta, and swap around USB connections quite often, with a variety of devices. I have seen a "too much power" only once, and expected it when plugging a bus-powered drive into a keyboard.
I don't know if the mini is really affected by the USB issue, but not for me. Perhaps the beta testing will help the USB issue soon.

 

[ActionableMango]

El Cap has a few USB issues for sure, and I think this is one of them.

A new, free version of OS X every year seemed great to me at first. But in retrospect, it just seems that there's never enough time to get a mature version of OS X before Apple has moved all its resources onto the next one.

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

Thanks for the replies. I have already tried PRAM reset and leaving the MP unplugged for a day. I booted into 10.8.3 (as I have it still on my old disk), and it gave me the message once, yet all my ports were working anyway. In El Cap, it spams my notifications with the message and shuts off two of my machine's rear USB ports. Even when nothing is plugged in at all, El Cap spams my notifications with one message every 5 seconds. I had to turn notifications off, in fact.

Just FYI, the hub I had plugged into one of these ports no longer works for some reason; I tested it on two machines and it appears to be dead. I wonder if it messed something up or if it got messed up in the process.