[Milhouse]

Here's a the log (pastebin) of OpenELEC without force_turbo/initial_turbo and it does indeed switch to ondemand early in the boot process. As long as the user hasn't enabled force_turbo then it should be possible (much later in the boot process) to switch to the conservative governor (assuming this causes SD cards to behave, at least temporarily) however switching governors won't work for force_turbo users.