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How to Fix an iSight Camera that is Not Showing Up

2009 November 16

So lately I noticed the iSight web cam on my 2008 Macbook Pro wasn’t showing up to Photobooth, Skype, or any other program i tried to use it in. I checked on a bunch of forums, read apple support pages, and revised google search queries until I wanted to scream! After trying to remember the last time I used the camera it hit me, the last time I used it was in a virtual machine (Ubuntu on VMWare Fusion). I know I had to connect the camera manually by clicking the camera icon in the virtual machine widow so I thought that could be the culprit. It turns out after 3 days of searching that it was the problem.
VMware Fusion1

So if you are having trouble with yours make sure to activate and deactivate the camera in any virtual machines you have. Hope this helps!

( i am running Mac OSX 10.6.2 on a 2008 Aluminum Macbook Pro )

2 Responses leave one →
  1. Simon Porter permalink
    November 19, 2009

    Hi,
    I recently noticed my isight had disappeared from System Profiler on a 2007 Macbook running 10.6.2.

    I’ve tried everything else I’ve come across, including your suggestion (I use Parallels, though I can’t see it in Parallels either…)

    Had your iSight disappeared from the system profiler in your situation?

    Cheers

  2. November 19, 2009

    yes my iSight does not show in the system profiler when it happens. i have also found that sometimes after i put the computer to sleep (by closing the lid) the iSight does not work when i reopen it and it takes a restart to get it to work…

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