CyBeRHQ.nl » Built-in iSight problems

Annoying, Tech20 Aug 2006 21:32:51 by Marco

Over the past few days I’d noticed my PowerBook G6’s built-in iSight had crapped out. Whenever I wanted to use an app like PhotoBooth to check my hair (because say what you want, it is a nice mirror) I would get an error:

Photo Booth cannot open because no camera is attached or the camera is in use by another application.

Eh? I just booted! I knew it wasn’t a hardware error because of two reasons: a) it showed up fine in the System Profiler (whereas an actually broken iSight in a MacBook I had seen earlier did not show up properly) and more importantly: it worked perfectly fine a few minutes earlier, the only difference between the two times being that before, I had been using Leopard. And when I rebooted back into leopard, voila: it worked again.

So, I thought. Must be a software issue. So I did an archive and install of Tiger. No dice. But it had also kept some non-user settings so I figured some other crap must have been left behind. So I backed up all my stuff and did an Erase and Install, figuring it would then pretty much have to work. Nope. Not even during the OSX setup and registration screens.

Not a hardware problem, and not a software problem. What the hell?

I did some digging into how the iSight works, software-wise and eventually found my way to a forum topic on the Parallels forums about Parallels possibly supporting the iSight now that Bootcamp did. There, a post detailed the contents of the new Bootcamp installer, and there being an updated iSight driver that apparently also updated the iSight’s firmware:

System Profiler reports:
before Boot Camp 1.1: Built-in iSight Version 1.55
after Boot Camp 1.1: Built-in iSight Version 1.82

So, this mean Boot Camp 1.1 updates the iSight’s firmware to version 1.82 in order to bring support for the Windows iSight driver.

Ah. I had installed Bootcamp 1.1 to partition my internal drive for Leopard. I had a look at my System Profile and sure enough, Built-in iSight version 1.82. Apparently this newly firmware-updated iSight does not work with the pre-update drivers, as installed by MacOS X versions 10.4.7 and earlier. I didn’t need all of bootcamp again, so I opened up the bootcamp installer package, installed the iSight Driver.pkg package, rebooted and whammo, my photobooth hair checking mirror was fully functional again.

This will most likely not be so much trouble anymore once 10.4.8 gets released, but right now if you have installed Bootcamp 1.1 and then reinstall your mac, be sure to reinstall bootcamp again so your iSight will continue to work.

Update: Apparently I just did something very right when reinstalling in preparation of bringing Portia to the doctor (also known as Apple Centre) for an issue with the screen because not only did the iSight work during the install assistant, its firmware version is now back to 1.49. All I did was repartition and do a minimal (deselect everything there is to deselect) installation so I’m not sure what kind of dark magic is causing this…

49 Responses

On August 24th, 2006 at 12:06:31 Asger Hagerup said:

Where is the built-in iSight supposed to show up in the System Profiler? I am having the same problem with my the iSight on my MacBook now (rebooting doesn’t do the trick either), but I can’t seem to find anything mentioning the iSight camera in the System Profiler at all!
On August 24th, 2006 at 12:08:26 Marco said:
It should show up as ‘Built-in iSight’ under USB:
```
Built-in iSight:

  Version:	1.82
  Bus Power (mA):	500
  Speed:	Up to 480 Mb/sec
  Manufacturer:	Micron
  Product ID:	0x8501
  Vendor ID:	0x05ac  (Apple Computer, Inc.)
```
For me, without other USB devices connected, it’s the bottom-most device in the USB part of System Profiler.
On August 24th, 2006 at 20:45:56 Joseph Duchesne said:

Thanks for the fix, the same thing happened on my iiMac. Crap, after erasing the harddrive now I have to download bootcamp again!
On August 30th, 2006 at 03:13:16 Jonathan said:

You are the man! :)
same story as yours.

thanks.
On August 30th, 2006 at 08:51:04 Whieee said:

testing it now :) Had the same problem on my BlackBook, and I have also been using Leopard for a few days. Downloading Boot Camp at the moment… let’s hope I’m lucky ;-)
On August 30th, 2006 at 08:59:03 Whieee said:

update:

w00t it works again :) Nice tip :)
On August 30th, 2006 at 20:26:51 lndshark said:

I would like to know just where you are finding this “iSight Driver.pkg” I’m just not seeing it
On August 31st, 2006 at 12:30:17 NVinNYC » Blog Archive » iSight Funky-ness said:

[…] Somewhat stumped, I did some searching and found this account of the exact same problem (with more technical details). It turns out that because I had installed Boot Camp on my Mac Pro and then booted my Mac Book off of this drive, the iSight firmware had been updated. As such, the Mac Book was unable to communicate with it as it lacked corresponding updated drivers (but the Mac Pro could because it had those drivers). The solution is to extract the iSight drivers from the Boot Camp 1.1 installer and add them to the Mac Book (Boot Camp installation is not needed, but would work too). I imagine this will only be an issue until Apple releases 10.4.8 which bundles the updated drivers, but I thought it was an interesting problem worth discussing. However, this could remain an issue in the future for a computer that hasn’t been updated to 10.4.8 or had Boot Camp 1.1 installed. […]
On August 31st, 2006 at 12:33:05 Marco said:

lndshark:

This file is inside the Boot Camp installer package that you download from apple. Control-click it and choose ’show package contents’, then browse around the folders a bit. I don’t have the package here anymore it seems so I can’t check exactly.
On September 18th, 2006 at 05:17:11 Bruce Emerson said:

I have found that installing bootcamp 1.1 definitely disabled the isight cam in my macbook .. reinstalling the system software restored life to it
On October 3rd, 2006 at 10:57:15 Andrew Chalkley said:

10.4.8 doesn’t fix the problem :(
On November 3rd, 2006 at 15:23:15 Roberto said:

Bruce:
what do you mean with “reinstalling the system software”?
I also lost iSight cam on my black macbook, can you help me?

Thank you,
Roberto
On November 6th, 2006 at 15:29:19 Michael said:

Having tried the isightdriver.pkg extraction/installation method on my own virtually identical PowerBook G6 without any success, I’ll now ask a somewhat noobish question.

If my isight’s firmware is now “upgraded” and nothing I can do currently will teach the operating system how to communicate properly with it, do you think simply taking the thing to an apple store and having them replace the camera hardware itself would essentially turn back the clock to that wonderful, care-free time before the dreaded update occurred? Would this not solve the isight problems, or am I not understanding how/where firmware data is stored?

Thanks for offering so much more in the way of clues and solutions here than anywhere else on the web!
On November 6th, 2006 at 20:55:26 Marco said:

Michael–

You should check the system profiler to see if it still recognises your iSight as such. If it does, then upgrading software should help. If it does not, then it is actually broken (which need not have anything to do with firmware) and needs to be replaced. You can find it under the USB section.

As I noted in my update, it is possible to downgrade the firmware in the iSight, but I must admit I don’t know how I managed to do that as I didn’t expect it to happen and therefore didn’t pay much attention to it.
On November 6th, 2006 at 22:01:13 Michael said:

Well, this little problem just seems to be one step ahead of me at all turns. The profiler does recognize the isight (it’s version 1.84 at the moment), and I had used Bootcamp v1.1.1. After making a couple of unsuccessful install pkg/reboot attempts, I found that there is now a Bootcamp v1.1.2 and even installed the isight pkg from that download as well. No idea what, if anything, it is that I’m doing wrong, but if just getting a new camera is a viable option, I’m thinking I’ve got little choice at this point. What do you think?
On November 6th, 2006 at 22:05:15 Marco said:

Well if even with the newest software it doesn’t work, I’d bring it in for repairs because then most probably something else is wrong. They can easily check if it’s a software or hardware problem by booting your machine from one of theirs (with working iSight) and seeing if it works that way.
On November 7th, 2006 at 04:53:02 Michael said:

For anyone that still cares, I’ve regained isight functionality within 10.4.8 without so much as touching the firmware (which is still labeled as 1.84). First, I did an archive install (reverted to 10.4.6 from disk), then ran software updates to bring my quicktime, itunes, and OS up to speed, rebooted, and that’s all it took. I won’t pretend to understand any of it, but hopefully this will be the end of my isight problems.

Thanks again, Marco, for putting your head together with mine to get to the root of this.
On November 15th, 2006 at 06:56:30 Garbage. In Garbage. Out. » Blog Archive » Built-in iSight Problems Require Driver Reinstall said:

[…] Seems Apple’s BootCamp 1.1 (which includes Windows drivers for iSight) also updates the iSight firmware to version 1.82 (from 1.49) (thanks to Marco at CyBeRHQ.nl). There may be a bug in that updater which doesn’t properly install updated drivers on the Mac, which is causing you grief. […]
On December 12th, 2006 at 21:07:01 声仔 -> Is Silence said:

photo booth 无法打开因为摄像机被另一个应用程序使用…

晚上安装新抢到手的MacBook Pro，装好后发现Photo Booth无法打开，提示下面的错误： photo booth 无法打开因为摄像机被另一个应用程序使用 (Photo Booth cannot open because no camera is attached or the camera is in…
On April 28th, 2007 at 15:42:23 David said:

Thx man! Reinstalling the isight driver really solved my problem!
On May 14th, 2007 at 13:29:19 Rafael Siqueira said:

How are you guys already using Leopard???
On May 17th, 2007 at 13:17:41 Jose said:

Hi! I am using a MacBook and by some reason the built in cam does not work properly on aMSN, Yahoo, … is there any way I could fix that.
On June 21st, 2007 at 13:10:07 Maple said:

Hey i read your solution about the problem u have..but mine is kinda different prob..my iSight suddenly cant work n msg of its being used by other application keep appearing whenever i try openning app lik photobooth ..i checked system profiler..its fine there..n i reli out of idea already other than sending my macbook for service..da solution u mention cant work for me coz its not wen i uprade to leopard or wat…i din change anything in my macbook n the prob jus happen..
On June 21st, 2007 at 13:11:15 Marco said:

Then you should probably go to an apple center, yes.
On September 6th, 2007 at 21:53:55 sNoZ LoMbArDo said:

Works like a charm for me!
Thx
On October 14th, 2007 at 23:56:32 edmund said:

there is no iSight mentioned in profile, the when i open Photo Booth, it prompt “Photo Booth cannot open because no camera is attached or the camera is in use by another application”
On October 28th, 2007 at 21:19:22 charlotte said:

i update my version of os x , since then the isight camera won’t work in parrellels, in msn messenger, it used to, but doesnt any more.

any help please???
On December 18th, 2007 at 07:37:40 theogrobler said:

You are surely the man!
On December 19th, 2007 at 12:03:12 Matt said:

Ok, after nights and nights of fiddling around I managed to fix this problem!
Before I give you the link here’s a brief history of what I tried:
- I’ve installed Ubuntu Linux with a hacked iSight firmware installer I found in some german website. Sure that worked, only my iSight died again every time I turned off my mac.
- I tried installing BootCamp but never quite got there cause I never had enough space on my hardrive.
- I upgraded to Leopard, and that didn’t fix it either.
- I tried rebooting with all those key combinations like command-control-shift-p-r and such.
- I tried reseting the pram as recommended by apple in their website, icnluding taking out the battery and all that crap.
- I tried reinstalling the firmware with a firmware rescue disk…
- Ok, I tried every single solution I found on the web and none worked… Untill I came across a site describing how to write kernell extensions and bla, bla… boring… but combined with the first Linux based solution I came up with a brilliant idea, and it worked! So here you go, here’s a tiny folder containing a StartupItem that will make your life better! Enjoy!!
http://www.eriymati.com.ar/iSightFix%20Folder.zip
On December 23rd, 2007 at 09:24:01 Pedro said:

Well lucky you guys, my isigh(t) doesn’t show up on the system profiler, doesn’t light up and my country doesn’t have any Apple store or whatsoever. Plus my macbook has been brought from Dubai (!) and besides the double alphabet (QWERTY + Arabic) it misses the del key so I guess Santa Claus has been given me a fake one with broken camera, OMG!! And I’ve been with it for three days, not a chance to be happy, will get back to my lousy PC.
On January 18th, 2008 at 01:00:32 Dion Oudejans said:

Hello All,

I also have a problem with the built-in iSight on my MacBook 2GHz. I found that in my case the power adapter has to be connected at start-up (no restart, but a power off/on start-up!) to make the iSight work. When start-up is without the power adapter connected, the iSight will not work in my case and doesn’t show up in the System Profiler as “Built-in iSight” under USB, but as “Vendor Specific” or nothing at all.

Maybe your Mac with built-in iSight reacts the same. The above doesn’t really solve the issue, but might bring us closer. Please let me know if you experience the same or found a real solution.

Bye,

Dion Oudejans (d.a.p.oudejans@raketnet.nl)
On February 1st, 2008 at 23:58:43 Elise said:

Hey everyone…
My situation is slightly different…
When I click photobooth, it doesn’t say ‘no camera connected’, rather, is just is a black screen. The green light next to my built in isight is illuminated, but there is nothing but a black screen in place of what would be me.

Has this problem ever happened to anyone else? If so, How do I fix it?
Thank you.

Elise
On February 2nd, 2008 at 00:42:48 Xris said:

Hi:

I have also suffered from an inexplicable loss of iSight funtionality after an bootcamp/system update/parallels installation.
I had also tried ALL the possible “fixes” described in various sites (zpram, reset pmu/smu, reintall tiger/leopard, etc…) and none worked for me.
I found a post of someone re-flashing (i think) their iSight firmware in Linux with the apple supplied firmware (in the core services folder) and fixed his problem for good.
I was getting pretty desperate at this point (it has been about three weeks since I discovered the problem) until I found THIS site here.
I admit that I don´t really use my iSight very much, but I just can´t stand the feeling of having something not working “just because”.
Anyway, the above “fix” (kernel extension patch/code) worked for me… which brings me back to my first impressions on the problem. Software and NOT hardware.
I would really like to find out how many people have returned their macs to a service center to have their iSights REPLACED, when in fact it seems to be a SW fault somewhere in between APPLE (and BootCamp).
I know it will not be the same for everyone but it has worked for me and I am very grateful to Matt for his research and easy “Startup Items” fix.

Thank a lot Matt. You saved my sight :->

Xris.
On February 8th, 2008 at 23:38:26 iStig said:

Hi;
I am running a MacBook Pro C2D 2.2GHz, running Leopard on a clean install. I’ve done all of the software updates, haven’t done any system hacks and am just generally running a clean system. Before upgrading to Leopard, my iSight worked fine. Now, it doesn’t. I don’t think this is a coincidence: I am convinced it’s a software issue. Unfortunately, I’ve tried resetting the P-RAM, SMU/PMU, and have tried the fix listed above. I’ve repaired permissions as well. Nothing has worked. Is there anything I can do to fix this?
On February 11th, 2008 at 22:02:41 Andrew said:

I have the same problem.. I think it is important to note that I have no Sight listed in my system profiler which would at first indicate a hardware problem. But if i reset the system PRAM etc i can get it to show up until it put the device to sleep or reboot then nothing. So if this was hardware related how come it does like this?

Also this only started after I upgraded to Leopard. I have also installed Bootcamp and under windows it works. Come-on Apple don’t make MS Windows work better on My Mac than OS X. that sucks.
On February 14th, 2008 at 02:43:52 Lucas said:

Okay guys…..I’m not all that educated with macs….but I’m about to throw my mac out the window. My isight will not come up for any program or user….it’s been this way for about a year. I tried the isight fix kernal thing. What do you mean by permissions? And I didn’t have a folder called startupitems….Like you guys mentioned..every day it kills me to know that I could be using my beautiful isight camera. Could someone please help? Any help I could get would be greatly appreciated! Thanks,
Lucas
On February 16th, 2008 at 00:28:14 Sarah Benett said:

There have seemingly always been issues with iSight. Apple really need to look into this and get it sorted.
On March 23rd, 2008 at 18:35:59 Dmitri Terletski said:

I read all of these. Sad… My problems started somewhere before 10.5… it was infamous 10.4.10 piece of crap update, that killed my USB. In fact it wasn’t USB entirely. all my mass storage peripheral USB devices were out. I could connect dig.cams and Wacom tablet, printer, keyboard. But thumb-drives, external hard drives, USB hubs, etc - were OUT! One of the C.O.W. (well not of war - of super update by Apple) was USB iSight internal cam. Since then I tried many things and certainly important to mention that I didn’t see it in System Profiler (like so many others). So there came Leopard and I smelled hope - sure somebody’s voice was heard and Mac was all over the problem. I upgraded Tiger… nothing. I backed up everything, formatted drive (killed WinXP for that) and clean installed Leopard. Nada! iSight still not in the system profiler. Neither could I connect USB “army” to my iMac. Here where it became interesting. I was staring at system profiler one day, reminiscing the good old days when Mac used to work, when I kind of realized that the only USB device clearly shown there, was Mac keyboard and it’s hub (2 extra USB ports) with one port occupied by Wacom tablet. Why not!- I thought- now I sure will see if something really doesn’t work - at least it will be 100% clear. And I connected one of H.drives to keyboard HUB… What do you know! It suddenly mounted… I checked Disk Utility and Ma-an!!! - it was there as well. In short: I have my external 7 port USB hub with every port occupied and external HD all mounted on my desktop and all ! through the Apple Keyboard Hub. All the ports in my iMac still don’t show any signs of life when I connect any mass starge USB devices. Even the one that has keyboard plugged in! with total of 2 external HDs, thumb-drive, printer, USB wireless mouse receiver, iPod, Wacom Tablet and all devices functioning. Just wanted to share this very strange story with those unfortunate who lost iSight along with other USB connections to Mac ingenious OS. Strangely WinXP picked up on all these devices 3 times faster than Mac… Ahmmm… Rotten Apple.
On September 7th, 2008 at 20:34:38 Ty Morton said:

Thank you Matt!

Your solution worked perfectly!

ty
On September 17th, 2008 at 19:18:56 KANG Ghee Keong said:

Hey Matt!

The startup isightfix works beautifully.

Just to share my situation: I’m on Leopard 10.5.5. Camera worked nicely until for unknown reasons, the green light stays on permanently, and the camera refuses to work when I press the red button in PhotoBooth. Simply a black screen. And after I hit the red button, it goes ‘3-2-1-camera!’ and that red button turns gray (disabled), and of course the screen was black still.

Thanks Matt, you rock!
On January 30th, 2009 at 05:17:57 ANDREW said:

i tried matt’s quick fix. downloaded the file, put it in my startupitems folder. restarted my mac. it then prompted something about it needing to be “fixed” so i clicked fix, thus, restarting my mac again. restart come ok without anymore prompts, but isight still isnt working.
is there a step i missed?
its not showing up in my system profiler, nor in photobooth. it hasnt been working for probably about six months, just randomly went away. im now actively trying to fix this problem, so any help would be greatly appreciated.
On April 18th, 2009 at 20:31:57 Mark said:

I have the same problem as ANDREW. Tried Matt’s fix, put in StartupItems folder, restarted mac. Prompted to “fix”, which restarted computer, isight still does not work. HELP!
On July 30th, 2009 at 19:43:43 Tiffany said:

I have the same problem as Andrew and Mark…. any possible solutions from there??
On March 21st, 2010 at 22:25:37 goodluck said:

I am using Parallels on 10.6.2. The iSight doesnot work either in Photo Booth or in Skype (only black screen and the indicator green light’s on). First run Parallels and use iSight in windows, the iSight should work normal, if not reinstall the bootcamp drive. Unplug iSight from Parallels, now the iSight works normal both in Photo Booth and Skype. If the problem appears again, then do the same thing again to fix it.
On March 21st, 2010 at 22:45:22 goodluck said:

try here http://www.codium.co.nz/isight_fix/
On October 30th, 2010 at 15:49:53 Guus said:

Thanks Matias Gertel for this iSightFix, saved my secondhand iMac (2006)…

Cheers!
On November 12th, 2010 at 08:55:42 mug printing said:

I’ve meant to write about something like this on my blog and you have given me an idea. Thanks.
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Hello, my group is just establishing our first website, looking out and understanding what’s needed. This blog stuck out right away. I’m fired up about this, and adore the design of your site. Are you able to let me know what “theme” it’s?
On January 14th, 2011 at 18:22:41 Canecas Personalizadas said:

Acesse Squeezes

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