Photo Booth freezes often

[deathtolife04]

Hey guys- I spent quite a while trying to search for a thread about this, because I didn't think I was the only one with this problem. But I couldn't find a single one!


I don't really use photo booth very often. But whenever I have friends over they are FASCINATED with it, and ALWAYS want to take tons of pictures of themselves! It gets really annoying because it always ends up freezing, and I can't get it to un-freeze without totally restarting my computer! It's really annoying when I've been working on an essay, and have a buncha important stuff up, then I have to re-start my computer and then open everything back up again, just so my friends can take pictures of themselves.


They've gotten so used to doing it they don't ask anymore. And if I say they can't get on cuz it freezes it, they just won't take no for an answer! I really need to figure out what's making it freeze!


Any ideas?!

It only came with 512 mb of memory. I got it almost a year ago, since then the middle-level macbook like I have has upgraded to twice the memory for the same price...



Also, is there any way I could make it so you need a password to open photo booth? ALL my stuff is on the admin account (cuz when I first got my mac I didn't know any better).


PLUS, it's kinda embarrassing to me because it makes it look like my computer is crap! I mean, when the one thing my friends always get on always freezes, they assume it's crap.

 

[mathogre]

I've had minor issues with Photo Booth in OS X v10.4. I've had it freeze on me a few times, and in earlier versions of 10.4 I'd occasionally see something like recovered files in the trash can that showed they came from PB. My sense has been that PB in 10.4 isn't as stable as it should be.

I don't think there's a lot you can do about it. I'm not aware of being able to lock a function such as PB. Your options look like this to me.

1. Do nothing and accept that PB is going to freeze on you.

2. Google the problem and see if you find anything there. You may have already done that as you apparently searched here. Congrats and thank you!!!!

3. Look for all of the preference files for PB. Back them up and then delete them from your system. ("Delete" in this case can be simply creating a special folder and moving the preference files to there.) This is JUST for the preference files. Something might be corrupted in one or more of the files. I'm at work, so I can't tell you exactly where to look. However, you could look in your Library directory and in your Pictures directory. You probably ought to remove the pictures too after backing them up. Your goal here is to give yourself a pristine starting point w/ PB w/o doing a system reinstall. If something messes up, restore your saved preference files.

4. Set up a new account. Call it whatever you want, such as Photo Booth. Password protect it. Technically, you now have a password protected version of it. To help keep people from using PB in your admin account, drag the PB icon to the desktop and watch it go *poof*. You can still access PB through Finder, but no one will be tempted to do it from the bar. Simply tell them they need to go to the PB account to use PB. This also has a similar effect as option 3, giving you a pristine starting point for using PB.

5. Backup your system and do a proper install and setup. Establish real accounts.

6. Move to Leopard, OS X 10.5. Backup your system and do a proper install and setup. Establish real accounts. PB was supposed to be improved for Leopard. While I haven't installed Leopard yet, I will this weekend.

Good luck! I hope this helps. My daughter and I play with PB all the time. It's a great application, stability notwithstanding.