Troubleshooting the iSight: Resurrecting "dead" units with Yahoo Messenger

MacFixIt reader Fred Licht describes an odd solution to "dead" iSights - a relatively common phenomenon for the newly shipping video conference cameras:

"When I first received my iSight the green 'on air' light would only go on 1/2 the time. After three weeks of using my isight on both my tower and my laptop computer, the built-in microphone in the iSight no longer worked. I tried all possible solutions of unplugging the isight, quitting ichat, plugging in the camera, launching iChat, rebooting, etc. I was about to send it back to Apple under warranty. Until I randomly decided to send video to a friend via Yahoo Messenger.

"Lo and behold, by enabling the webcam on Yahoo Messenger it reset something in my iChat(s). The 'On-Air' light now works as it should, and each of my computer can now use the built in microphone again. Note: Running Yahoo Messenger only fixed the issue on that local machine. I had to perform the same steps to have it work properly on my desktop."

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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