Frustrating camera issue!

[ref26]

So, I've been having a strange issue with my iSight recently. It will work sometimes, and then one day for no reason, it won't. When I open up photo booth it's just black, and the green light won't come on. When I try and video chat, it says the camera is in use, which it obviously isn't. It will let me chat, though, the other person just can't see me. If I restart my computer, the camera will start working again, but the same issue will come back within a few days. About a month ago I called Applecare about this and a palmrest crack, and sent it in. Since I had to turn it off to send it in, though, they didn't see any problem when they received it and thus didn't do anything about it. Once the issue came back again, I took it to an Apple store (about an hour away) so I could show someone in person. The genius sent it in for me and they replaced several parts, but it's happening again! This is very frustrating, and I really don't want to have to make the drive again. My school store sells Macs and I might be able to take it there for them to have a look. I've had a few other issues with this machine, too, do you think they might just consider a replacement at this point? I've had a couple other small issues with the machine in the past (DOA battery, palmrest cracks, stuck pixels). It's a late '07 Blackbook with plenty of Applecare left. Also, the issue started after (but not right after) I installed Snow Leopard, if that might have anything to do with anything. Any advice/opinions are appreciated.

 

[quantum003]

Interesting, it says Camera is in Use... that makes me think you've got an application installed that may be reserving your iSight for it's own use.

Do you happen to have another Mac? If you put another Intel Mac into "Target Disk Mode", connect it to yours, and then rebooted your Macbook while holding down "Alt/Option", you can boot up the other Mac in your machine. If you have unrestricted access to your iSight camera while booting up another Apple disk image you know the problem is with an application, and not hardware.

 

[ref26]

Unfortunately I don't have another Mac here If I'm with a friend with one any time soon I'll definitely try that though, thanks.

 

[quantum003]

You might also try a program called "Onyx", it can be downloaded from Apple (Google it). Repair permissions and clean out other temporary settings and folders from your primary machine. A good cleaning out of temp, cache, and preference files could also resolve your problem.

If that doesn't work there is another, more fun option... do you have an external storage drive that you can use to install Mac OS X onto? (and a license for Mac OS X install). This is going back to the original idea of booting up another OS to see if it's your OS or an application getting in the way.

You can connect an external hard drive to your laptop, put in an install disc, and then restart your computer. Go through the Mac OS X installer until you get to the part where you choose a target disc to install Mac OS X onto.

[advanced part]
I would suggest entering Disk Utility from the Options menu and erasing the external hard drive. Format it as "GUID", not FAT-32 or Apple Partition when you delete it, so that it can be used to boot up Intel Macs. I also recommend partitioning your drive into several pieces. Maybe creating a partition of 50GB or so to install Mac OS X onto, so you still have other partitions left to use for other purposes.

[/advanced]

Install Mac OS X onto your external hard drive. Once the computer restarts after the installation, it will boot up the OS that you just installed to your external, on your Macbook. From there you *should* have unrestricted access to your iSight camera since there are no applications installed that would be hogging it selfishly.