Mac Problem!!! Any helpful Mac people?

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Any Mac gurus in the house?
Has anyone ever seen this before?
Does anyone know what may be wrong or how to fix it?

Any help for a fellow DIY'er would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks
 

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frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
Paid Member
One can literally interpret the message to be that photobooth is not talking to the built-in camaera (you do have an iMac or MacBook with built-in camera -- i'd guess yes since you have a pic from before)

Could be software -- 1st thing you do (Tiger or Leopard?)

1/ repair disk permissions. Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility open, select 1st aid and clik repair permissions.

note: Titanium Onyx is a free utility that does this and a lot more.

2/ boot off a different disk with a fresh OS install and see if things work. (not easy if you don't have a suitable spare disk). If that works you need to do an archive install of the OS again (unlikely the problem unless you are experiencing other issues)

3/ is the camera talking to other aps (iChat or go into System Preferences > Accounts > select the avatar icon, choose edit picture and take a snapshot)

Or it could be hardware... see your local apple tech

dave
 
does the camera work in other applications like ichat? That would rule out a hardware problem. And speaking of ichat, it's not open is it? Even if someone in another profile is using a program that uses the camera photobooth won't work.

On mac many things can be fixed by deleting old preferences files that have gotten screwed up. Photobooth's preference file is at-> your home folder/library/preferences/com.apple.PhotoBooth.plist

Drag that to the desktop or trash and open photobooth again, it will make a fresh preferences file with the default preferences.

edit: oops I see you already got advice to try another program and it didn't help. Hopefully one of the other tips will help.
 
:D

Funny, but I consider reinstalling the OS the nuclear bomb of computer troubleshooting and will spend days trying to fix it instead of a few hours reinstalling. In more than 10 years of using macs I've never had a problem that required a full OS reinstall though.

You've probably run through the standard list of computer voodoo but: Unplug EVERYTHING but the monitor keyboard and mouse. Run software update and install all available patches, restart and run it again because more will often show up. Logout and login in as a different user and try it again. Shutdown, unplug the power cord, pull the battery if it's a laptop, press the power button in for a few seconds, you know make sure it's really dead then restart. On a Mac trash the prefs and all cache files that might be used by the app. Make sure you're not running anything like VMware or parallels.

Most apps and everything in the OS will log any problems they run into and you view these logs in an app called console. Launch photobooth then open /applications/utilities/console and you should see a wack of messages from photobooth.
 
frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
Paid Member
poptart said:
Funny, but I consider reinstalling the OS the nuclear bomb of computer troubleshooting and will spend days trying to fix it instead of a few hours reinstalling. In more than 10 years of using macs I've never had a problem that required a full OS reinstall though.

My experience pretty much (24 years of experience thou). With OS X a renstall is needed occasionally. Fotuneately the archive & ibstall retains most everything (it seems to miss one folder that Photoshop needs).

You've probably run through the standard list of computer voodoo but: Unplug EVERYTHING but the monitor keyboard and mouse. Run software update and install all available patches, restart and run it again because more will often show up. Logout and login in as a different user and try it again. Shutdown, unplug the power cord, pull the battery if it's a laptop, press the power button in for a few seconds, you know make sure it's really dead then restart. On a Mac trash the prefs and all cache files that might be used by the app. Make sure you're not running anything like VMware or parallels.

Before & after updates one should repair disk permissions. Onyx does a lot of the other things in it automation script (including cache nuking). IDefrag is usful if your drive has ever gotten close to being full (the auto-defrag in the newest OS revs is not nearly as thourough)

dave
 
Hello World!

I second Dave's advices, Onyx should be used on regular basis. It is as a great tool to clean up various cashes. Zapping the PRAM very often clears weird hardware issues. I usually do three consecutive zapping of the PRAM. If none of this works try this UNIX approach, but before you do that make sure that you didn't turn camera off in some other app such as iChat or Skype (disclaimer: do not use UNIX commands if you are not sure what you are doing):





Use fsck
fsck is a command-line utility that may be able to verify and repair a disk. If you can successfully start up in Safe Mode or use Disk Utility while started up from a disc, you don't need to use fsck. However, here are some situations in which fsck may be necessary.

Your Mac OS X disc isn't available.
Your optical drive isn't available.
You can't start with a Safe Boot.
Tip: If you use a Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) formatted volume, such as with Mac OS X 10.3 or later, you probably won't need to use fsck. If you do use it for any reason, please be aware that benign error messages can appear.
If you're not sure how your volume is formatted and you can't start up from your Mac OS X volume to find out, type the following command in a command-line interface and then press Return: diskutil info /

If you see "File System: Journaled HFS+" returned, you have a Journaled volume.

To use fsck, you must run it from the command line. Unlike using your mouse to open an application to do something, you'll need to type a text command at the prompt (#) to tell fsck what to do. The Terminal application (/Applications/Utilities) and single-user mode are two examples of command-line interfaces in which you can type such commands. To use fsck:

Start up your computer in single-user mode to reach the command line.
Note: If necessary, perform a forced restart as described in the Emergency Troubleshooting Handbook that came with your computer. On desktop computers, you can do this by pressing the reset/interrupt button (if there is one) or holding down the power button for several seconds. On portable computers, simultaneously press the Command-Control-power keys. If your portable computer doesn't restart with this method, you may need to reset the Power Manager.
At the command-line prompt, type /sbin/fsck -fy
Press Return. fsck will go through five "phases" and then return information about your disk's use and fragmentation. Once it finishes, it'll display this message if no issue is found:
** The volume (name_of_volume) appears to be OK
If fsck found issues and has altered, repaired, or fixed anything, it will display this message:
***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****

Important: If this message appears, repeat the fsck command you typed in step 2 until fsck tells you that your volume appears to be OK (first-pass repairs may uncover additional issues, so this is a normal thing to do).
When fsck reports that your volume is OK, type reboot at the prompt and then press Return.
Your computer should start up normally and allow you to log in.

About live verification in Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later
In Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later, you can verify your Mac OS X volume while started from it. This is known as live verification, and can be used in three different ways.

Option 1: Verify your disk using Disk Utility while started from the startup disk. To find out how to do this, see this article. Please note that live verification does not involve any disk repair, so if verification finds something that should be repaired, start up from your Mac OS X Install disc and use Disk Utility as described above in "Try Disk Utility."

Option 2 (advanced): Use the command line and the command-line utility, diskutil.

Start up your computer and log in as an administrator.
Open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities).
At the prompt, type the following command and then press Return:

diskutil verify /
Note: Don't use this method to check non-startup volumes.

You should see messages such as the following during the disk check:

Could not unmount disk for verification, attempting live verify
Started verify/repair on volume disk0s3 Macintosh HD
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK.
Mounting Disk
Verify/repair finished on volume disk0s3 Macintosh HD

Option 3 (advanced): Use the command line and the fsck_hfs -l command.

Start up your computer and log in as an administrator.
Open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities).
At the prompt, type the following command and then press Return to determine your filesytem ID:

df -hl
Look for some lines of text that look like this:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s3 37G 20G 17G 55% /
/dev/disk0s5 37G 37G 641M 98% /Volumes/Storage

Make a note of the first "disk" name that appears after /dev/, such as "disk0s3." This is your filesystem ID for your startup volume.
At the prompt, type the following command and then press Return:

df -hl
Then type the following command, where "disk0s3" is your filesystem ID you noted in step 4, then press Return:

sudo fsck_hfs -l /dev/disk0s3
When prompted, enter your admin password, then press Return to begin the verification.
You should see messages like these during the disk check:

** /dev/rdisk0s3 (NO WRITE)
** Root file system
** Checking HFS Plus volume.
** Checking Extents Overflow file.
** Checking Catalog file.
** Checking multi-linked files.
** Checking Catalog hierarchy.
** Checking Extended Attributes file.
** Checking volume bitmap.
** Checking volume information.
** The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK.
 
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