"There is no connected camera"

Worked for me!

sudo killall VDCAssistant

is very good. In y case, Skype was holding up the camera.

Thanks!

(Late 2007 Macbook with Snow Leopard)

I just wanted to say the Terminal command actually worked for me, so thank you. I won't have to reboot do reset the SMC every time I want to use the camera anymore.

Mine was a hardware problem. The display was replaced, the webcam is buit-in.

Hi madams end

I'm not an english native speaker and I think I don't understand what "sudo killall VDCA assistant" means. How can I do it? Is it a document or what?

Thank you

Quit all the programs running right now. Then open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal and launch Terminal. At the first prompt the is shaped like a $ sign type: sudo killall VDCAssistant

(Press the enter key)

Thank you very much for your answer, but apart from pressing the enter key do I have to write my password or something?

Thank you again

No

Hi pennbank and thank you again. I typed sudo killall VDCAssistant and I was asked a password (which one?), but I could not write anything else. Any idea?

Thank you a lot for your time

It is asking for the administrator password, that means the one you use to log in. Also, it doesn't show anything while you type, that is normal. Just keep on typing! And of course, finish with return (enter). Also, there is a GUI way, through Applications->System Utilities->Activity Monitor. There, you jsut highlight VDC Assistant and click on Quit Process above.

Thanks a lot for your help, but now what I get is "no matching processes were found". My camera works only after reboots, and not always, or after PRAM. I'm fed up with this issue.

Try the Activity Monitor way (you can also find it through spotlight) and find the process on the list. If it's not there, then... well that's all I know about that! I have also found that logging off and back on again does the same thing with rebooting, but it's a bit faster

Dear Apple,

I still need to regularly do this (sudo killall VDCAssistant). In fact at this point I have written a script to do it. Which is stupid. I'm a unix developer but I use MacBooks because I don't have to write one-off scripts to poke at hardware. If I wanted to do that I'd buy notebooks at half the price and run Ubuntu on them.

And if my only choice is to buy expensive Apple kit and write scripts to make it work, or buy cheaper $OTHER kit and write scripts to make it work, guess which one I'm going to do?

Love,

A (current-going-on-$UP_TO_YOU)-customer

agree 100%

Kevin Lyda wrote: ... Dear Apple, ...

You are NOT writing to Apple here. Most who post here are merely users like you. Apple offers this forum to allow users to help each other. You will find additional helpful info in the tutorial pages starting with http://discussions.apple.com/static/apple/tutorial/etiquette.html

• For one on one help from Apple, contact your Apple hardware vendor or use on-line options like http://www.apple.com/support/macbook/contact/

• To offer MB product comments or improvement suggestions directly to Apple, use MB "Feedback": http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbook.html

For feedback on other items, select from http://www.apple.com/feedback/

You are unlikely to get a direct response from your "Fedback", but you can be certain that the responsible Apple people will see your input for consideration in future products.

Message was edited by: EZ Jim

Mac OSX 10.8.3