Windows 10 "camera in use" no it's not Grrr

Werewolf · 16 Oct 2020 at 15:34

Hi I've ran into a very annoying problem and google/bing seem to be sending me round in circles with every site either telling me to do one of about three things or download an app to fix it.

At some point in the last day or so (possibly since I let windows do a couple of small updates last night* or when I tried to use google meet in chrome) every time I go to use my webcam it shows as not being available as it's "camera reserved by another app".

So far I've:
Turned app access of and on again.
Uninstalled Zoom, Skype and the Camera app, and reinstalled them.
Rebooted the computer multiple times.
Tried the camera in another USB port.
Tried removing the camera and having windows get the driver again.
Tried disabling the camera, rebooting and re-enabling it.

The camera LED is off, but will turn on momentarily when I tell an app to use it, and Privacy updates the last time Skype etc tried to use the camera.

Nothing seems to be letting it work on this machine, but the moment I plug it into another it's fine (so not a hardware issue).

I've spent about 2 hours on it so far with no success,

I did have an issue a few weeks back where I had to turn app access off and on again because Windows wasn't letting Skyp access it (blank picture) but that didn't give an error, or stop the camera app from using it.

*Cumulative update for windows 10, adobe flash and .net.

Werewolf · 16 Oct 2020 at 22:07

For anyone else who has this issue, I finally (after about 3 hours) remembered I had a cheap USB "endoscope" camera, so I unplugged the webcam and plugged the endo in and it worked.
I then plugged the Webcam back in and that worked.

It looks like whatever was going on was reset by the use of a different camera.

darael · 17 Oct 2020 at 20:22

Werewolf said:
cheap USB "endoscope" camera

Dare we ask? :eek:

Werewolf · 17 Oct 2020 at 23:30

darael said:
Dare we ask?

You might not like the answer.

IIRC it was originally bought when I was trying to route a cable and kept hitting something, it let me see what it was and work around it without making any more holes/taking up the floor, but it's also handy in the garage and for checking pipes. It's one of the things that sounds mad to buy for one use, but can save so much time/effort.
I've got a much more expensive one that's standalone that's proven useful locating the source of water in a leaky flat roof, and when my sister locked herself out of her house by leaving the key in the back door, then letting the front door close whilst it had a key in - the camera + wire coathanger worked to turn the key

bledd · 19 Oct 2020 at 07:33

When Windows is being stupid :/

Werewolf · 19 Oct 2020 at 15:21

Yup, at least in this instance it was fixable, unlike basic windows peer networking which seems to have been mangled since they introduced "homegroup", every time there was a major update applied to one of my machines it broke the homegroup*, and even now that it's gone simple networking still seems to be broken for me/I still have to do some of the same fixes every update.

*I never managed to find out exactly why, but suspect it's something like it overwrote some homegroup settings but not others as IIRC one fix involved removing the credentials from the affected machine with regeit and creating a new homegroup password.