Isight camera suddenly not detected anymore on MBA Mountain Lion. How to fix?

Same thing is happening to me as well. I have a Macbook Pro Retina and ever since Mountain Lion I have been facing this issue (I think this is cos of some bug in Mountain Lion). Normally a restart helps but this is just plain stupid of Apple to not care.

Edit: Also I have my Macbook connected to thunderbolt display and it doesn't detect either of the two cameras.

Hey guys. I've had the same problem you've all been experiencing and I'd like to share my experience on how I eventually got the issue fixed. My computer is a MacBook Air 11' mid-2011 that I bought immediatly after its release. Like many of you, my Facetime camera suddenly started not to detect after upgrading to Mountain Lion. Since I had a video chat on Skype just fine a day before I upgraded, I thought it was a software issue that would be resolved in subsequent updates. I did try SMC+PRAM resets and a clean install but with no results. With 10.8.1 & 2 not resolving the issue, I took my MBA to the Apple Store in IFC Mall, Hong Kong. The Geniuses tried booting up from both ML and Lion with no luck. They did a hardware diagnoses and concluded that the Facetime camera had a hardware issue. Since I told them the FT camera worked fine under Lion, they claimed that it couldn't be a software issue and that I'd have to get the entire screen unit (display+camera+lid) replaced for around HKD $3,300 (about USD $425) (my 1 year warranty has already expired). Despite the void warranty and the hardware diagnostics, I was able to convince them to replace my display free of charge. The manager of the store seemed understanding of my situation and to that I'm very grateful of. 2 days later I picked up my MBA and the FT camera is working just fine under 10.8.2. So maybe it was a hardware problem after all! But I still doubt it as the issue happened immediately after upgrading, and from the many similar reports by other users like you guys.

If you have a 2011 MBA, I suggest you immideatly go to an Apple Store to get it checked out before your warrently runs out!

Hope this helps!

Are you serious ! you get an 14 months old computer... upgrade it to the manufacturers os update... and BOOM 500 $ of work on a 1500$ computer ... you got to be kidding me!

Reading this thread I see that it's not an isolated case... So if anyone has a fix for this issue... please share it here and to Apple... please look into this, Come on I didn't pay 1600$ for this computer so that just over a year later I have to repay nearly 1/3 of that price to get a camera back to work.

I'm from Thailand and facing the same problem as your and there are many topics about this problem here.

My MBA is mid 2011. The built in camera was broken after upgrade to Mountain Lion.

I've tried PRAM, SMC reset, cleaned install, and time machine back to Lion but the problem still persisted.

iStudio in Thailand told me I need to check hardware inside and it will cost some money and if the hardware is broken, it will cost a lot of money.

The camera was broken immediately after the upgrade so I thought Mountain Lion cause it.

My MBA has already ran out of warranty and I don't want to pay any maintainance cost which occurred from the software bug.

For those who got this problem, could you suggest me what should I do between waiting for a new software update or sending my MBA to change the camera hardware?

I had the same problem and after troubleshooting with apple care on phone I finally reinstalled mountain lion from scratch (format HD and stuff) and then restored from time machine backup. It seems like mountain lion definitely has some bugs but doing an upgrade from lion increases the chances of getting those bugs.

Try this, it worked on my 15" retina.

Thank for your recommendation.

I'm not sure is it the same with my cleaned install solution.

I did the cleaned install by,

1. Download the ML 10.8.2 from the app store.

2. Use app (I forgot its name already) that can transform the ML to flash drive (8 GB)

3. Restart MBA and hold 'option' button. After that, I erased all data by using disk utility and then selected reinstall (choice no. 2)

Could you please give me your steps to reinstalled mountain lion which you got from apple care?

I don't remember seeing a reinstall option, I did see an install option though. What I did was (from what I can recollect):

Boot from the ML boot drive I made.

Open disk utility, format the drive completely.

At this point even my recovery HD partition was gone.

Now install ML and then restore from time machine.

I had the 10.8.0 image saved on my external disk so I installed from that, then restored from time machine and then did software update to get to 10.8.2

I guess that there might be some update file which fixed the bug (may not include in the 10.8.2 standalone).

>Did you test the iSight camera after finished the installation with 10.8.0 before update to 10.8.2?

>Do you know where can I get the 10.8.0 stand alone?

Anyway, thank for your response 🙂.

I cannot find any help in my local. This community is the only one I have.

Yes I did test the iSight camera, that was the first thing I did actually :D

I don't think you can get the 10.8.0 standalone from any direct channels anymore, I luckily saved a copy when I got my upgrade.

Fun fact: my iSight camera still sometime doesn't work but now the probability is like 2% which proves that both upgrading from previous installation and ML have issues.

I really don't know what else to say here except what I tell everyone that we are now living in a post Steve Jobs era where supposedly quality isn't a concern for apple anymore. I have an iPhone 5 which needs to replaced cos of faulty hardware and twice I have been at the service centre here in New Delhi, India and both the times they were about to give me a physically defective piece which were opened from seal boxes right in front of me.