Photo Booth does not turn on iSight

Question

iChat and iMovie will both turn it on, so I know it's not a hardware problem, but I can't get Photo Booth to turn it on. If i press the button to snap a picture, it goes through the motions, "Flashes", and I get a black picture since the iSight never turned on.
Things I have tried so far
repair permissions
full restart
deleted PH's .plist file in my home directory
reinstalled from the original DVD
and finally, logged in as a new user, where it still failed, so I know it's not a problem in my Home directory.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to what else I can try?
Oh, and yes, it used to work fine, but I haven't had a need for PH in several months.
Thanks in advance for any help, or suggestions on what might be a better forum to pose this in if this wasn't the best choice for a software problem!

Answer 1

Welcome, J Coffle
I think you are in a good place, but I imagine you will only think it is the right place if you get your problem solved. At any rate, if I can think of a better place, I will let you know.
First, what is "PH"? Assuming you mean "Photo Booth", I will offer a couple of suggestions for your consideration. If I am wrong, stop here and post back the correct meaning.
You have tried several good things. Here are a few more you can consider.
(1) Disconnect all peripherals while you do your testing to rule out possible conflicts. 
(2) Check for any running applications, Login Items, or widgets that can use your iSight. (It is easy to forget widgets like Mirror in your Dashboard.) As explained in Apple's iSight "Your camera is in use by another application" message, iSight can be used by one application at a time.
(3) Try every relevant Built-in iSight suggestion in How to Troubleshoot iSight.
(4) If resetting or the other troubleshooting suggestions do correct your problem, try the following:
- Backup your Home Folder, or at very least, your important files.
- Repair permissions.
- Then download and apply the Mac OS X 10.4.10 Combo Update (PPC).
- Perform another Permissions Repair.
- Then check Photo Booth again with no other iSight apps running.
Users have reported fixes to a variety of audio, video, connectivity, and software conflicts and unreliability issues after properly applying the latest Combo Updates.
If you can recall anything significant that might have changed since Photo Booth last worked, what changed would be helpful to know if you must post back for more ideas.
EZ Jim
PowerBook 1.67 GHz   Mac OS X (10.4.10)    G5 DP 1.8  External iSight