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photo booth

hi all just as i was getting somewhere with may new mac(2 weeks old) something crops up. when i click on photobooth it says photo booth cannot start because the camera is in use by another application.
now i 've checked whats running, shut everthing down but still the same, anyone any ideas

20 " apple mac 2 ghz intel core duo, Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on Apr 18, 2006 8:36 AM

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11 replies

Apr 18, 2006 12:41 PM in response to Gareth Barlow

Try checking Activity Monitor and selecting to show "My Processes" to see if u can see an application that may depend on the camera. You could also try restarting the computer and logging in but not opening any apps except for Photo Booth to see if it works then. If it does, then at least you have narrowed the problem down to an application that is using the camera, not a hardware issue.

Something else I thought of, when you try to open PhotoBooth, are any other accounts logged in? If so, maybe they are running Photo Booth, and possibly, they have Photo Booth set to open at login. In that case, as soon as the account logs on, Photo Booth is open, which would be using the camera. So try logging all other users off to see if it is an application within your account that s using the camera.

May 5, 2006 7:29 PM in response to Gareth Barlow

The Same thing happened to me. I had this problem after i installed and then unistalled aperture. I can't use photo booth or ichat. and after about 4 times of shuting down and restarting again, it works, only to freeze without me taking a picture. I check under processes and nothing is listed there. Also the green light is off. I called Apple, and they told me that it could be my computer overheating, and that i should return it.

May 16, 2006 12:39 PM in response to Gareth Barlow

Hi -- I have had the same problem and it drove me nuts. I've tried repairing the permissions and the disk itself, but the Disk Utility would give me an "Illegal Name" error. After further investigation I ran across this thread on the Adobe forum...

:: http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/332657.html

Long story short, my built in iSight on my MBP15 is working fin again! Here is what I did:

1. Followed the instructions in the above mentioned thread (Remove "Legal" dirs from Adobe CS2)
2. Boot from Installer Disk/CD
3. Launch Disk Utility
4. Repair Disk & Repair Permissions
5. Restart back into OSX

Hope this helps others running into the same problem.

Good Luck!

Kai

MacBook Pro15 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

May 18, 2006 10:24 PM in response to Little Kai

OK, this is getting really annoying.

I fixed the problem as outlined in my previous post, and then today I am getting the same old "Photo Booth cannot open because no camera is attached or the camera is in use by another application" alert again. I didn't install any new software/updates since the last fix, so this is turning out to be an Apple problem. The only thing I can think of that may have caused a conflict, when I was running iChat last night I did try to open PhotoBooth at the same time. And since the iSight can only be used by one app at the time, maybe this caused issues in some resource files? I did run a disk/permission check, and everything seems to be fine though. WTH?

Come on Apple Folks!

~ lK

MacBook Pro 15" Mac OS X (10.4.6)

photo booth

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