Bloody webcam drivers! arggh!

Please help me with this frustrating driver problem!

I dug out my old webcam that I used with my previous computer. By the way, I am using XP Professional. Now I want to install the drivers for said camera (It is a USB camera). All is fine and dandy, it comes up with the window that says "new hardware found - USB webcam" or something similar. So it goes through the process of installing the drivers, and it appears to have gone well, until the very end. It comes up with an error message

So I click "OK" and it tells me my device may not work properly. Indeed, it doesn't - and It shows up as an exlamation point in the device manager.

In the past, I have had problems with USB devices (such as getting my ti-89 to link up). I have noticed that each of the USB ports acts slightly different, in weird subtle ways (which is how I figured out the problem with the calculator). Generally, I have never really been able to use the ones on the front (on any computer I've ever owned). So naturally I tried re-installing it in every USB port on my computer. STILL NO LUCK!

Does anyone know what the error message means, that I am getting? I tried searching google, but it seems that people usually get this in the context of scanners, not webcams.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Any at all?

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for one you must be logged in as administrater to install programs

for another install the drivers before plugging in your camera

 

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I am the administrator, and I can install other things.

I tried installing the driver first, but it still autodetected when I plugged it in. Like it didn't know it was installed before. The weird thing is that now I can't even uninstall the bad driver. It says "cannot remove this driver. This device may be required to boot up the computer." WTF?

But it seems that each USB port doesn't know about the other one. So when I plug it into a different port, it thinks it's a different device, if any of that is important.

 

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Is it possible to remove it manually by brute force, such as deleting all the registry keys, or going in to the folder and deleting the driver file?

It seems I can't do anything else with it until I can cleanly uninstall it.

 

You can uninstall devices throught the device manager, since you are using XP Pro, try typing the following in the run... box.

devmgmt.msc

That should bring the Device manager up, You'll then have to hunt through whats installed to uninstall the driver, or reinstall it.

There is information circulating on the net that this class issue can be caused by the W32.Klez and W32.BugBear viruses
[source: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/famiDocument?dlc=en&lc=en&product=12019&cc=us&docname=bpu00740]

Other than that, most of the internet suggests uninstalling your USB connections, and then reapplying them. (Notibly if you are using cracked versions of an operating system could effect it.)

 

no, deleting the file will not work
removing registry keys will not work
as a matter of fact if you manualy remove the file you will most likely get an error when windows tries to load it
your best bet is to remove it with device manager

i have winme installed on my machine so i am afraid that i might not be of much help

i would unplug the device(camera)
i would look for the device in device manager then remove it
then reboot
next i would install the drivers
then i would plug in the camera

 

But my whole problem now is that the device manager won't let me uninstall it. It says "the device may be required for booting the computer"

I just scanned my system completely, I don't have any viruses. I even ran the utilities that specifically detect and repair the W32.Klez and W32.BugBear trojans, but it didn't detect any. I am almost ready to write this off as a webcam that just doesn't work anymore. It is a few years old, after all. But the only thing is, since I've had problems with USB devices in the past, there might be something weird I haven't tried.

And I've already tried basically every combination of uninstalling, unplugging, restarting, installing, and plugging in. My method isn't wrong. There is something wrong with the way windows is trying to load the drivers. I'd really like to know why it says the class installer denied permission to change or upgrade the device.

When you say this, do you mean uninstalling the actual USB drivers? Like for the ports themselves? Or do you just mean the device (i.e webcam) plugged into it? And I have a normal legal copy of windows, so that can't be the problem.

 

On x86-based computers, the way that the system BIOS code interacts with Plug and Play devices depends on whether the system BIOS or the operating system configures hardware. If your computer has this option, the setting for the Enable Plug and Play operating system switch can affect this interaction.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/c09621675.mspx

since you stated that you always had this problem then its very possible that your bios is not configured properly

 

Rubik's,
I just mean uninstalling the device. You might want to also check that you have the Plug and Play Service running in the background.

Type in the runbox:
Services.msc

to get Services up, then locate "Plug and Play", It should be both started and Automatic. If that service is not running the likelihood is that you'd have problems.

 

maybe ur using the wrong drive file... go search for specific drive for this device on the net. (a dll file).