Mac Forum / General / Hardware / December 2008

My IR receiver has stopped working on my iMac (first generation Intel).

It shows up in System Profiler:

 Version:  1.07
 Bus Power (mA): 500
 Speed: Up to 12 Mb/sec
 Product ID:  0x8240
 Vendor ID:   0x05ac  (Apple Computer, Inc.)

However, it is just identified as "USB Device".  It is supposed to be
identified as an IR receiver.

My guess was that I somehow lost a driver, so nothing is claiming this
device and telling the OS what it is.

To test that theory, I did a fresh Leopard install on an external drive,
and booted from that--and it still shows up as "USB Device" (and fails
to work) when running off that fresh Leopard.

So, I'm at a loss.  Any ideas?

There has been some discussion on the Apple discussion forums of the IR
receiver failing, but those don't match my symptoms.  They usually
involved it being disabled in the "Security" system preference pane, and
are fixed by simply re-enabling it there.  Some people (including me) do
not have a setting for the IR receive in that pane, but can get it back
by deleting some particular plist file.

I did that, and it brought the IR setting back to the "Security"
preferences, but that didn't help, which makes sense, as my failure
(based on the System Profiler results) is not a messed up setting, but
some kind of failure of the OS to recognize the device.