Dead iSight
manfred | 11 December 2009Or so I thought. As one of our favourite applications on the Mac, Photo Booth is often launched. A few days ago, Photo Booth showed little more than a black screen. Hugely disappointing, of course. The usual Windows fix of rebooting the machine made little difference. It was only on the reboot that I noticed the constant glow of the green iSight light – normally, that light is off until the camera is active.
My initial reaction was to believe the iSight had died a sudden, if peaceful death. Then I remembered hearing about a PRAM reset, an operation that clears the PRAM which stores certain system and device settings in a location that Mac OS X can access quickly. The PRAM reset is not complicated and requires a bit of dexterity with hands and fingers. Read about the procedure here.
With the PRAM reset performed and the machine running again, we were relieved to see Photo Booth operational.
If you have a misbehaving Mac, try this as your first remedial action. For misbehaving kids, there is, unfortunately, no PRAM reset. Yet…
