Webcam working erratically.

[ohjrson]

Hello, I tried both, the updates and drivers, but to no avail. I would have believed that it was a hardware problem, but the webcam takes the videos perfectly. It works very well on video chats on Skype and Google hangouts. Can it still be a webcam hardware problem?

That very well could be. However, I looked at your text and I did not see what kind of Camera, Webcam or whatever was loaded in there, did I miss it? What is the name brand camera you are using. Also, do you have a switch on the camera anywhere that allows you to go from Camcorder mode to picture mode? And if so, What position do you put it in when it is plugged into your Dell when you take pictures?

[rokytnji]

Kind of unrelated and off topic but I think it kinda applies to hardware glitches.
Different hardware and problem.

My Blackberry 9530 Storm phone that I have had for ages finally bit the dust. It took me a few days of troubleshooting
to figure out it was a hardware failure. You will see why when i descibe the symptoms and my way of finding out the phone
was the problem, instead of software or sim card.

I use a pay as you go simcard by H20 wireless that uses AT&T towers. I pulled it off the charger and it was SOS instead of 4 bars.
I did everything from a secure wipe. To a operating reinstall. The tricky part was when the phone powered on. I would get a 4 bar
signal display for a couple of seconds then drop to SOS.

Trying Manual instead of Auto connect. I could see my H20 tower and signal in the manual connection wizard. I would pick connect to this network. Loading bars and everything going like it would connect. But it would fail in the end.

I pulled the sim card and cleaned all contacts with a eraser. Then inserted my sim card in a good phone (Motorola AtriX)
Boom. It would connect to my network and I could dial out. So problem is not with sim card. Not with operating system (software). Logic tells me the radio would not complete the connect sequence for what ever reason hardware wise.

This happened out of the blue. Just being charged up overnight. I was a good working unit for a very long time. I liked that
it just hooked up via mass storage device as usb drives on my linux laptops.

I am just explaining my reasoning on asking if the camera may be failing. It may work like you say. But freezes are usually
in my experience hardware related.

I make my money fixing things plus I tinker. That is why I brought up webcam possible fail issue.

I could be wrong. For it is hard to tell when one is in a forum setting instead of having the hardware right in front of them.
Logic tells me from your posts.

First I installed 32 bit and everything was working perfectly,

Hello, I wiped the 64 bit and reinstalled 32 bit. Now I have the same problem with 32 bit.

So what else am I supposed to think?

[Madhuvan Rishiraj]

Hello, the Webcam is inbuilt. It does not have a switch. I guess I can believe that it is a hardware problem because nothing else seems to be it. I don't know if it is related but since I have reinstalled the 32 bit Mozilla Firefox has been crashing again and again. Now I am slightly scared.

[Madhuvan Rishiraj]

Well, I tried the webcam with a live USB with Linux Lite 2.0 and Android x86 and in both the webcam worked perfectly.

[Madhuvan Rishiraj]

Hello, now the webcam is working. Here is what I did> Through a live USB I checked and the webcam was working. I don't know why I did it, but I entered GParted and wiped the entire disk formatted it to FAT32 and formatted it back to ext4. Then reinstalled the 32 bit version. It's working as of now. I thank everybody for their help and will wait for a day or two if it continues working. If it doesn't I'll get back to you.

[ohjrson]

Oh ok Great job, Congrats.

If I may say. Running the live cd was a good choice. It told you that it was a software problem not a hardware problem because if it were hardware it would not have worked. So.... You just have to list the drivers for your Integrated webcam and write down the driver it is using now. Not sure how to do that but I am sure you can find out. Then when you do an update before you select "y" for the download look at them and make sure it is not going to do something with it. That goes for the Synaptic as well. BTW your web cam is integrated with your microphone. I was looking up the specs for your laptop and Win 7 seems to have issues not seeing it either. Something about having to install the drivers in the RIGHT sequence for them all to work. (What a mess) So.. great that you got it working. Welcome to Beryl.
Ohjrson

[N4RPS]

Hello!

Regardless of the OS, based on my experiences, it seems as if a MINIMUM of 2 GB is REQUIRED for a 64-bit OS to work without being sluggish. On systems with only 2 GB RAM, the best option really IS a 32-bit OS.

I just finished 'cleaning up' a Lenovo ThinkCentre that has a quad-core in it (AWESOME!), but it has only 2 RAM slots on the MB with 1 GB RAM each. The OS? Vista 32-bit...

73 DE N4RPS
Rob