"There is no connected camera"

Question

Level 1

15 points

"There is no connected camera"

Hi, I just purchased a Macbook Pro 13-inch (mid-2012) about a month and a half ago. Since, I bought it, I've had issues with the built-in Facetime HD camera working when it wants to. The built-in camera works right away once I turn on the computer, but if it's been on for more than a day, or at least on standby during the day, I'll get an error message saying "There is no connected camera" when I try to launch programs like Photo Booth or Facetime. However when I reboot the computer, I have no issues.

-Also, I looked in "System Information" to see if the computer was recognizing the camera on the list of USB interface, and it is.

-I upgraded to OS X 10.8 - Mountaing Lion in hopes that it would fix this issue, but it didn't.

-After careful research, I came across some posts about an "SMC" reset. I went ahead and performed one, but it didn't do anything that rebooting the computer didn't already do (make it work for a day)

All help is greatly appreciated. This is my first mac, and if this is a serious problem, I wanna get this computer to an apple store asap. Thanks again!

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012), OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Jul 30, 2012 9:32 AM

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Answer 1

dosers

Level 2

391 points

Sep 9, 2012 1:29 PM in response to itsbgilbro

Have the same issues exactly

MacBook Air 13, mid 2012 model.

OS X 10.8.1. System profile always shows it, but after sleep, camera is 'not conected' (restart always fixed it).

As per madam's end, I wonder if some process hangs on to it (iChat?) and thus doesn't release the VCDAssistant. This started a few weeks ago, but was not present at the beginning (and prior to 10.8, possibly 10.8.1).

Has anyone called support yet or filed a bug with Apple?

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Answer 2

Sep 24, 2012 8:17 AM in response to dosers

I took in my computer yesterday and they thought it was a hardware problem. They ended up replacing my air and 1:1 tranferring all my data. I got a brand new MBA and it worked at the store but when i took it home, same problem as usual. It is a software issue. How do we report this to Apple, maybe they don't know.

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Answer 3

Sep 30, 2012 8:26 AM in response to itsbgilbro

Resetting computer's SMC helps. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

I have a late 2008 MacBook Pro updated to Mountain Lion, the issue with camera started after the update.

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Answer 4

airazust

Level 1

5 points

Mar 26, 2013 2:45 AM in response to isurftheturf

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.

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Answer 5

Oct 14, 2013 10:13 AM in response to Sheem

I am having the same problem after the latest firmware update.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5446192

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Answer 6

Oct 26, 2012 1:53 PM in response to itsbgilbro

I bought my MacBook pro on July 1st, 2012 and since it came with Lion I know for a fact I never experienced this problem with that and even after upgrading to ML it was fine, I'm guessing 10.8.1 is the issue or I am experiencing this issue with delay. Whatever it is its killing me and a restart fixes it remporarily but then when I use the camera again it goes off-on a few times and then the ''There is no camera connected'' message pops up. When I tried Madam's command for killall it did not work as it said ''No matching processes were found''. If someone can help here it would be great. Apple needs to fix this.

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Answer 7

itsbgilbro Author

Level 1

15 points

Feb 24, 2013 4:28 PM in response to itsbgilbro

Minor Update since I haven't tended to this post in a while. Since posting I've received quite a few general software updates and I can't say I'm still having this issue. If anything, I'm having it LESS often. It's also too difficult to reproduce on command for me to take it to an apple store for a more detailed look.

I also did an NVRAM reset out of desperation at one point, but I'm not sure that had any impact on this problem.

Thanks again Madam's end for the Terminal command solution. I'll be sure to try it if I run into this problem again in the future.

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Answer 8

EZ Jim

Level 7

22,660 points

Apr 30, 2013 1:59 PM in response to Kevin Lyda

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

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Answer 9

Jun 10, 2013 3:21 AM in response to isurftheturf

It says that there is a chance things will be deleted from my computer. I'm very worried about this; how likely is this to happen? My computer is a Macbook OSX 6.10.8 (so a bit older, the white touch trackpad kind), if that helps. Thank you very much for your help 🙂

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Answer 10

Sep 4, 2013 7:14 PM in response to isurftheturf

My laptop is a late 2012 MacBook Pro w/ intel i7. My camera stopped working a little while back apparently and I recently realized that it wasn't functional.

I have restarted the SMC three times and I checked both madams end Terminal-based method and the Activity Monitor method. Neither resolved the problem.

Any idea what else could be the problem?

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Answer 11

Sheem

Level 1

0 points

Oct 12, 2013 9:51 PM in response to itsbgilbro

Hello, I have a Macbook Air and last night, it updated a few stuffs but since then, the camera refuses to work on any app or any other user account.

I would be most grateful if someone could help me sort out this problem, please.

These are the 4 updates, after which my camera is not even detected:

MacBook Air EFI Firmware Update

MacBook Air SMC Firmware Update

iTunes

OS X v10.8.5 Supplemental Update

I am wondering if any of them triggered this because the camera was fine before the updates! I have tried resetting the SMC or the solution proposed by Madam's end but nothing works 😟

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Answer 12

Jan 21, 2014 7:21 PM in response to itsbgilbro

I have to do an SMC reset every time I want to use the camera on my 2008 unibody. It's gone through phases of this but is particularly bad right now for some reason. The kill VDCAassistant command doesn't work, as I apparently have no VDCAassistant running. Sigh....

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Answer 13

Jun 15, 2016 2:52 PM in response to isurftheturf

Thank you thank you thank you. Pls contact me when you are in Manhattan for a free Starbucks. Was afraid of terminal because of dire warnings (like your life support might be disconnected if you fool with sudo). Less scary to do it the GUI way.

P.S. Thanks a lot!

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