I installed Windows 10 on my Aspire SW5-111 and it couldn't see the camera.

Musicman
Musicman Member Posts: 8 New User

I upgraded to Windows 10 (32 bit) on my Aspire SW5-111. It didn't find the camera. I had used the camera earlier in the day, Skyping my daughter in Germany, and it worked fine then. Then I did the Win 10 upgrade and now no webcam. Looking on the Acer website, the only 32 bit win 10 drivers are audio, Bluetooth , and LAN. After struggling with it for a day I reverted back to Win 8.1, however the camera was still not found. I had to reinstall the Platform Drivers and finally got the camera back. Has anyone successfully upgraded an Aspire SW5-111 to Windows 10? Do I dare try the 64 bit Platform Drivers, or do I run the risk of bricking the computer, if it will even let me install them?

Thanks for any input.

Answers

  • padgett
    padgett ACE Posts: 4,532 Pathfinder

    What you need to do is extract the platform drivers into a temporary directory. Inside you will find a directory called "camera".

     

    Next Open Device Manager > Imaging Device > (camera name). Click on the tab marked EVENTS. Record the Device name (USB\VID_xxxxxxxxxxxxx)

     

    Now when you install Windows 10, open Device Manager and look  for either the camera or an "unknown device" with the same USB\VID...). Select the Driver tab and Update Driver.

     

    Select "Browse my computer..." and browse to the Camera directory you just created. Make sure "Include Subfolders" is checked and click "Next". This should install your camera only.

     

  • Musicman
    Musicman Member Posts: 8 New User

    Thank you for your response, but I think I was not clear enough in my first post. This is not a USB camera. It is the built in camera. It isn't in the device manager under imaging device, it is under system devices. When I had Windows 10 installed, I don't think it appeared at all. I know for sure that I looked in Imaging devices, Digital media devices, sensors, and in sound,video, and game controllers and neither the camera nor unknown device appeared. I'm not 100% sure I looked in system devices, but I think I did. At any rate, I can try installing Win 10 again and seeing if I can find the camera in System devices. Does anyone know if there is a limit to how many times I can upgrade to 10 and then revert back to 8.1?

  • padgett
    padgett ACE Posts: 4,532 Pathfinder

    And that is how the internal camera in my R3 and Sw12 (SW5) shows up, as a WebCam. YMMV

  • Musicman
    Musicman Member Posts: 8 New User

    Still no go. I reinstalled Windows 10. Camera didn't work, and Skype didn't see it. Went Into System devices on Device Manager and found Camera Sensor OV2720, which is my built in camera. It said it was functioning properly and drivers were up to date. Deleted the drivers and installed the drivers from the unzipped camera drivers folder (from the Win 8.1 32 bit drivers pack). No change in functioning. I suppose I can try downloading the Win 10 64 bit drivers and seeing if the camera drivers will work from that.

     

  • padgett
    padgett ACE Posts: 4,532 Pathfinder

    Camera drivers are in two places in Device Manager, it is also under "Imaging Devices".

     

    Do you have a 32 or 64 bit machine ?

     

    I show the SW5-111 as a Switch 11 with a 32 bit architecture.  I aslo show a

    Acer Crystal Eye HD webcam and not an Intel. Is this correct?

     

  • Musicman
    Musicman Member Posts: 8 New User

    It came with 32 bit Windows, but on the driver page it also gives me an option of 64bit for Win 10, so I supect the architecture is 64 bit but they went with the 32 bit OS. Don't know who made the camera, they just call it "Camera Sensor OV2720". Under Imaging devices they have Intel Imaging Signal Processor 2400.

    Looking on the Acer site they indicate 32 bit architecture. However, what I have is not exactly what they are showing there. This came with a 500 GB HD in the keyboard, which is not on the SW5-111 they show. Don't know what else is different. Bought it through Costco, which frequently has its suppliers do something to give some added value. Aother rather odd thing is that I tried using the SN on the back of the case to make sure it was getting the right drivers, but it didn't recognize the SN. WHen I used the Auto detect SN tool, it gave me a completely different number.

    Still no functional camera.

     

  • padgett
    padgett ACE Posts: 4,532 Pathfinder

    Well I show the z3745 is not very fast (burst is 1.86 GHz) but is 64 bit capable. OTOH 64 bit likes at least 4GB of memory (Win 10-64 sitting on 2.2GB in use right now & just browser and eMail open). I really would not want to rein Win 64 on 2GB of memory.

     

    I suggest you stick to Win 32.

     

    BTW I show the camera as a LITEON/12P2SF209 FHD LT_OV2720

     

     

  • Musicman
    Musicman Member Posts: 8 New User

    I'm going to leave it on Win 10 for the time being. Going to see if Acer support can help. However, I won't be able to doi it for a couple of days. Thanks for your input on this.

    Notice your tagline luggable. I have you beat on the portability of my first PC (if you can really call it that). In the early 1980s my first computer was a Sinclair ZX81, a kit you put together yourself. Membrane keyboard, cassette tape drive, a whopping 8k of RAM, which I expanded with a 16K RAM pack that fit into a bus on the back. Learned Basic and started into machine language with that.

  • padgett
    padgett ACE Posts: 4,532 Pathfinder

    I had a ZX-81 also but mine only had 1KB (1kx8) of RAM which I upgraded to 2KB before getting the ram pack. Columbia was the first I had with a 80x25 display & could talk to real computers (VAX 11-780 at the time). First HLL I really knew was FORTRAN on a SEL-840 so BASIC came easy.

  • Musicman
    Musicman Member Posts: 8 New User

    Yes, my memory was faulty (It has been over 30 years). My ZX-81 had 2K of memory. I also had the thermal printer. Not sure what happened to all that. Think it got trashed at some point. Went up through Atari 800XL which I added a pack to that included 256 K of RAM that I could boot from, and SCSI ports for 2 HDs. My first hard drive was a 5MB drive then a 20 MB. Wrote a simple BASIC word processor with that, that just used strings to hold the text, just looped waiting for keystrokes and then added or deleted from the string.

    Anyway,

    just finished chatting with two different Acer service reps. First one was pretty useless, sending me to a page that was supposed to have Crystal Eye software. While it showed that, all the download links were for a driver download program that when I ran it told me that drivers (for programs I didn't even have) were out of date. A little research showed me the program was highly suspect and other people had a lot of problems with it, and problems getting it uninstalled.

    The second rep was more helpful, once I got him to understand that this wasn't the standard Switch 11, checked and found that Win 10 drivers had not been made for this yet, so I need to stick with Win 8.1.

    For anyone else reading this thread, what I have is the Aspire SW5-111-16GW which is the model sold through Costco. It has a different camera and comes with a 500 GB HD (not SSD). At this point there are no Win 10 Drivers for the camera

  • padgett
    padgett ACE Posts: 4,532 Pathfinder

    I've had to go back as far as Win 7 drivers before to get something to work with Win 10, only thing is they need to be for the same platform (32 or 64 bit).

     

    Have you tried "CCD_SUYIN_1.0.1.3_XPx86" ? That may be for an earler camera. OTOH the W510 also used the Crystal Eye app and may be inside the 35 MB driver package.(32 bit).

     

    When you've lived in the same place for over 30 years, things tend to collect.

     

    ps when the BASIC interpretor took up 768 bytes, going from 1k to 2k made a big difference.

     

  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 31,663 Trailblazer

    I did the TRS-80 to VIC20 to C=64 to Amiga 1000 to Amiga 2000 route, followed by so many branches of the tree that I get fuzzy... I still have the Amigas (five or six of them, I think) and they still work, though the last few years have seen enough advances in the PC world that they're finally out of date.

    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.
  • padgett
    padgett ACE Posts: 4,532 Pathfinder

    Well my desktop Win 10-64 machine will still boot PC-DOS (IBM) 1.0 (from floppy, 1.0 did not have hard disk support, came in the October 1982 revision). Not sure if good or bad but still backwards compatible.

     

    Meanwhile the edible fruit havs been through three (or five if you go back to the II & count the III) incompatible architecture revisions starting with Motorolla processors (8 bit then 16/32) then switching to Intel). The SE/30 was the first I had with an internal hard disk.

     

    BTW are you seeing the camera yet ?

  • Musicman
    Musicman Member Posts: 8 New User

    Started with the Sinclair, then a couple of Atari 800XLs, a Commie 64, thought about getting an Amiga (some in our local Atari users group had some), but finally went the PC route with several versions of DOS, and then all the iterations of Windows. Used to use a lot of DOS batch files until Widows made it harder. Until my last desktop, I would just build my own. Got an HP currently and boy do they make it difficult to expand. Only had a single 1TB drive, which is obviously not enough storage these days with HD video camera files taking up huge amounts of space. They had 3 empty internal bays and connections, but the bays used proprietary pins to hold the drives and they wouldn't sell them without selling the drive, so I just jury rigged my own. Then you had to go into BIOS (which was made difficult) each time as well as some deep settings within windows for the drives to even be seen. First couple of service people I talked to tried telling me that I couldn't add drives to the computer unless it was an external drive (of which I now have 4 attached to the system for storage, ranging from 2TB to 5 TB, just turning them on when needed.)

     

    Anyway, to keep this thread on the original topic, in response to Padgett, I have rolled back to Win 8.1 and have my camera back through that.

  • Musicman
    Musicman Member Posts: 8 New User

    I finally got rid of my last floppy drive a couple of years ago, though there are acouple of disks floating around. Never did go the edible fruit route, even though they were very popular for music work, which has been a large part of my computer work over the years. One thing that kept me in the PC world was the expandability and flexibility if you didn't mind cracking the case and getting your hands dirty.

    The biggest reason I got the Aspire was to use the tablet part as a music display giving me hands free page turns. I'd like the display to be a couple of inches bigger, but it works. Unfortunately, many of the manufacturers have made the larger displays wider (in landscape) without getting taller, aiming at the widescreen movie audience. I need the ratio of a standard piece of paper. The iPads have the right proportions, I just can't talk myself into the cost.

     

    After rolling back to Win 8.1 I have the camera. I'll just stick with that.

  • padgett
    padgett ACE Posts: 4,532 Pathfinder

    I have a 22" Dell display that supports roation. Are a few out there.