Built in iSight not working?

Hello.

Since yesterday I have been having the same problem. I own a Macbook Pro, 13'', late 2011.

I tried to use Skype and the camera was not recognized.No green light no nothing. Tried with facetime, photobooth etc but nothing. Checked the System Information and the camera was not there, under the USB subheader. I restarted it and still nothing. I tried to reset the SMC and nothing again. After another restart it worked. This morning I had the same problem after "waking" my laptop up. It was recognized at the beginning, but after a few minutes it dissappeared. After a restart, there it was again, recognized.

I am not a mac expert, but in my opinion this shouldn't be a hardware problem. I mean if there was a hardware problem, I would be able to see my facetime camera recognized at all.

Unfortunately my waranty ended this week, as I bought my mac exactly one year ago.

Do you have any help for my problem.

Thank you in advance.

Hi everyone. I have had this problem for awhile. Also I am using the thunderbolt display which I am not sure matters but I do know at one point, the thunderbolt display camera was working, when the macbook pro 2011 was not.

Anyway after reading many tips and discussion I reset the SMC and the PRAM. Of course I have a complete backup but also mention that data was fine after resets.

The one thing I noticed was there is definitely a trick to doing the multi-key pressing.

For the SMC. I watched a youtube video which gave me the idea to not only press the keys on the left along with the power button, but once you let go of the keys on the left, keep your finger on the power button just a second or two longer and then release it. This gave me a different result than when I let go of all keys exactly at the same time. I will also mention that when I did this, the fan came on full blast and stayed on. Also, the charging icon at the top displayed an 'x' and I could not make this change back to normal (plug or lightening bolt). At the time the battery was almost fully charged. This did not solve my isight camera problem and now my fan was running full blast (it's loud).

For the PRAM - again its a timing issue. Be ready to press the necessary keys as soon as you hit the power but after you let go of the power. THEN make sure you don't let go of them until you hear the system chime twice. It will work if you get the timing right. This did not solve my problem either, the fan was still full blast, and the charging icon was displaying the 'x'.

I decided to go on my merry way at this point and figured I'd be heading into the apple store this week. Not sure why but about an hour or so later, the mac shut itself off and rebooted with no interaction from me. The fan was off, and the charging icon was normal display. My thunderbolt display camera is working now, however my macbook pro camera is not. Anybody else have a thunderbolt display involved?

Any comments from the experts are welcome. I think I am still headed to apple this week for a hardware fix.

Hello, i have done exactly what your wrote here times without numbers and the camera still wouldnt work , i dont know what to do at this moment , becuase presently i am in Nigeria and i cant find any Apple Experts .

just tired of it .

I had an isight problem that was finally resloved by taking a printer utlity out of startup items. Weird - but my camera came back immediatly. Remember, when you login as a NEW USER to test the camera make sure you are logged out of any other accounts.

HI,

The thing is about the Laptops that have problems is that the issue can appear intermittent at first.

During this period you can have almost false positives on "fixes" such as a SMC /PMU reset.

There is not much room from the hinge to the camera up the back of the Screen.

As the cable is working loose almost anything can apparently get it to work again, shutting and opening the lid, using one side of the lid in favour of using the center. Grasping the lid bevel in the center near the camera.

However you do have a later model MacBook Pro that should be less likely to have the issue.

The routing of the cable in later models reduces the "tugging" effects of Opening and Closing the lid.

I would still contact an Apple Store and find out what they say.

7:31 PM Monday; February 25, 2013

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.2)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

Hi,

As Schnarf says below your post sometimes odd items in the System Preferences > User and groups > Log in Items can cause conflict for some unknown reason.

It is worth checking and excluding anything you have in Login Items as being a cause.

7:38 PM Monday; February 25, 2013

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.2)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

Hi,

Does this page help ?

https://locate.apple.com/ng/en/

7:43 PM Monday; February 25, 2013

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.2)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

Thank you for your reply Ralph.

Do you have any idea what the cost would be of fixing this issue? More or less.

I suppose that they would replace the screen right?

HI,

In the posts on the subject it seems people have been lucky enough to still have AppleCare.

These people report that Apple Replace the whole screen combo in a sort of "Hinge up" operation.

They do not see the cost laid out in their paperwork (I asked) just what the fault seemed to be and what was done to fix it and saying AppleCare was covering it.

At an Apple Store or Apple Authorised Service Provider there would be huge savings in Turn around time for the computer involved.

A large amount of "spares" could be had from the old screen.

This iFixIt site run through for one Model has 4 pages of steps with pics.

It is not until page two and stage 17 that they get anywhere near taken the Screen and Bevel apart.

You model may not be like this.

You will see in this model the Cables as all together at the right hand end.

Also some of the tools are a little bit specialised.

This is an earlier Model when step 27 shows you the camera.

You can see the cables running down the back of the screen in these later steps.

As it could be the camera itself or the cable, particularly around the hinge, or the USB controller that the cable runs to that is at fault it is difficult to say.

You could look up the parts to cost them.

Here in the UK the hourly rate for something like this is going to be around £40 an hour possibly more.

I would guess it might take 3 to 4 hours to strip it down if you knew what you were doing.

A straight swap of the Screen is obviously faster but the replacement, pre built, is probably a lot more.

Not much use I am afraid.

9:26 PM Monday; February 25, 2013

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.2)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

Thank you again for the extra information.

Today I faced another problem. When the camera was recognized, the image shown via Photobooth had interruptions. After moving the screen back and forth I noticed that the signal was either getting better or lost completely. I tend to believe that it has to do something with the connections.

I will give it a go on my own to check the connections. the webpage that you mentioned is quite useful.

thank you would find the locations, i hope they woud be able to fix it . thank you.

HI,

Just to be clear.

In most cases where this happens it seems the cable pull loose from the camera end.

In rare cases the movement of the lid on the cable through the hinge seems to cause wear on the cable causing electrical shorts.

These can obviously also look intermittent and vary on the movement of the lid.

8:20 PM Tuesday; February 26, 2013

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.2)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

My old iSight works perfectly with my iBook G3, but in my 2012 MacMini with Mac OS Lion (10.8.2), it records a weird sound, like if the audio was accelerated, but the video works fine

hi,

Certainly at the most recent posts in this thread the issue has been with Internal iSight cameras on Laptops and not the External but Original iSight.

Plug it back into the G3 and then look in System Profiler > Hardware > Firewire to see what firmware this iSight is running.

Since the original release there have been two firmware releases.

The last was for version 1.0.3 in Tiger (OS X 10.4) and was an Audio update.

In Leopard (OS X 10.5) the updater was included in a folder in

Hard Drive name/System/Library/Core Services/iSight Updater (mine is dated 24th September 2007)

It used to be that running Software Update tended to trigger this Updater during OS X 10.4

By the time you get to Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) the item is no longer included.

I have a G3 Tangerine iBook that has OS X 10.3.x on it as well as OS 9.

I am not sure I could update it further even if I had a hard drive big enough to encompass a later OS.

This may be a job for a Mac User Group to help you out with.

9:28 PM Saturday; March 2, 2013

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

 iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.2)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

Thank you, i tried uninstalling some audio softwares and it seems to be working now