New build - webcam won't work.

Pete.Dakota · 12 Jan 2012 at 01:18

Built a new rig yesterday: [email protected], 6950, Asrock E4GE. Everything is fine, except I can't get my friggin' webcam to work.

I can't work out for the life of me which the correct drivers to download of Logitech's website are, and the cam won't detect without it. I no longer have the box or anything, I have no idea what model it is - but when I match it up with the picture on Logitech's website, that model, it says, is not supported by W7.

The cam worked fine on my old rig which was running W7 too. I've tried a few different driver downloads and each one says that the webcam is incompatible. For reference, it looks mosty like this one. In that past I'm sure I've just downloaded this QuickCam software and it's worked fine.

Device manager says the device is unkown; it doesn't even recognise it as a camera. However it does give me two hardware IDs:

USB\VID_046D&PID_08AD&REV_0100&MI_00
USB\VID_046D&PID_08AD&MI_00

I've Googled these and a few hits seem to suggest the QuickCam software should work, as I remember it doing in the past. But now it says it's incompatible every time. I've tried different USB slots too, including 2.0 and 3.0.

Any ideas?

Unicorn · 12 Jan 2012 at 01:32

Tried running it in compatibility mode as xp or vista?

I just looked about logitech and there responses made me laugh.. they claim no support :') Fools

Pete.Dakota · 12 Jan 2012 at 01:38

That doesn't do it.

I'm sure in the past the device manager has always recognised it as a webcam from the first plug in, without needing drivers installed. This makes me think it might be something to do with the USB, or the cam itself.

I can't think what could be so different between this mobo and my old one that it would suddenly stop detecting a webcam - all my other USB devices work fine.

Pete.Dakota · 12 Jan 2012 at 02:01

I've just tried the cam in my laptop and it auto-detected and was working instantly - no downloads required. So it's a problem with my motherboard.

lomez · 12 Jan 2012 at 04:00

tried different usb ports?

had a camaera from logitech too it was very erratic used to work sometimes and sometimes it just wouldnt, stiill have it just never use it to do skype or anything just use my laptop :-)

R088ieS86 · 12 Jan 2012 at 08:46

I had that webcam, it wouldn't work on any of my windows 7 PCs.
I chucked it and bought a new one.

I know the last bit isn't much help but its unlikely to be your motherboard, it could be that the Service Pack 1 update to W7 might have stopped supporting it.

Pete.Dakota · 12 Jan 2012 at 13:12

lomez said:
tried different usb ports?

Yeah, I did mention that in the OP.

R088ieS86 said:
I had that webcam, it wouldn't work on any of my windows 7 PCs.
I chucked it and bought a new one.

But it worked on my old rig which was running W7 SP1. All that's changed is the hardware.

Pete.Dakota · 12 Jan 2012 at 18:12

OK so this issue is driving me mad now. This cam can be made to work on W7. It worked on my old rig (W7 SP1 64-bit) and it works on my other laptop (W7 SP1 32-bit), both just plug in the cam and away you go.

The official line from Logitech is that this camera is not compatible with W7 - officially. Unofficially of course, I know it does work.

For some reason though, on this new build, I can't just plug it in and be away - I have to fiddle with software. I've located the paper tag on the end of the USB cable: the product code is V-UAM14A. The software here can only be downloaded for Vista and below.

I followed the advice of this guy on the Logitech forums who says to download the Vista software and run it in compatibility mode to get it to install. But, for me, this doesn't work.

I've tried both the Vista 32 and 64-bit software, but every time I get the message that it can't run because of compatibility issues. HOWEVER, when I do the exact same thing on my laptop (W7 SP1 32-bit), it warns me about compatibility issues but still allows the software to install and it works fine!

So, in short, the cam and its old software still works on W7 SP1 32-bit but it won't appear to work on my main rig which is 64-bit - even though it did work on my old machine which was running the same OS.

I'm trying to think of some way I could manually move files from the laptop onto my main machine to "trick" it into working, but as I can only install the 32-bit version on my laptop I don't imagine it would work.

Normally I'd just accept this old piece of kit won't work on a modern OS and buy a new one. But I KNOW that this cam will work on W7 64-bit as it used to on my old machine. I can't think of any reason why it now won't work. And it's driving me crazy.