Swift 3 Why is my camera no longer automaticly recognised?

Gijs1973

Hi All,

The camera of my Swift 3 is behaving very strange al of a sudden, and I have no idea how this happened, and more importantly, how I can fix this.

To give you a brief overview of what is happening:

1) after a reboot, the camera is not responding to starting a video call in any of the applications (and using: https://webcamtests.com/ gives me:

could not find a web camera, however, there are other media devices (like speakers or microphones). Most likely, this means that your webcam is not working properly or your browser cannot access it.) 

2) starting the camera works by going through Start and searching for the camera.

3) the camera starts not directly, there is a short error message, but will come online in a minute or two after the error disappears.

4) then I have to go to settings, privacy and security, select camera, select device settings.

5) there is a small preview window, for the video stream, on this page, and if the video is working, I can start a video call, if this window is grey, I will have to repeat the process.

I hope this gives some idea of what is happening, and while it is possible to work like this, it is very annoying to go through all these steps when you want to have a quick (Christmas) call.

I am looking forward to your suggestions and getting my Zoom back online before the holidays.

Happy New Year,

billsey

Take a picture or screenshot of the error message for us.

Gijs1973

This is the error message, and after a second or two the camera is found and comes online, but I think because of this error Zoom and other Video Conf Call apps can't start the camera:

Gijs1973

It could be that I by accedent pressed a key combination which controlls the camera, but I would not know which key combination that would be :-( 

billsey

I don't think there is a key combination that toggle the camera. More likely it's what you suspect, in that it takes some time for the camera to be recognized. What happen if you load the camera app, wait for it to be recognized, then close the camera app and launch Zoom? Maybe it would take a bit to go away as well...

Gijs1973

Thanks Billsey,
I am afraid that's what I will need to do from now onwards, but don't understand what made the camera behave differently, it has been working fine until a few days ago.

billsey

Yeah, it doesn't deal with the root cause so may not even continue to work in the long run, but if the root turns out to be corrupted data on that internal USB port then a future driver update might fix it.

Gijs1973

Would you know how to fix this "corrupted data" the driver is old, and I didn't find (or got a suggestion for) a more recent driver?

No idea how this happend, and a bit reluctant to do a full system reset (with my other problems this didn't help).
 
 

billsey

The device that is likely acting up isn't the camera, it's the USB port the camera is connecting with. That is going to be in Device Manager as a USB Controller or a Connection Manager. I don't know of any good way to check to se which is which.

Gijs1973

I don't have that many of them, would you suggest unistalling and let windows reinstall the drivers?

billsey

Those look pretty much like the ones on my laptop. Try uninstalling them one by one, with a reboot between to see if the behavior changes. If not do and uninstall of the full group and try to see if they have dependencies that require them be reset all at once.

Gijs1973

Hi Billsey,

I have not tried your suggestion (yet), I am monitoring the situation; no idea what changed, but it seems the camera is working as expected again - I didn't change anything (because I was travelling). Tonight (CET), I am back home and will do a check-up; is there a good tool to do a (general) system check? 

I have an intel driver test, which tells me that three drivers are out of date, but these are related to the WiFi adapter, and I rather leave that one alone ;-) knowing the problems I had to get the adapter back online! 

billsey

Yeah, just keep an eye on things...