Can anyone help - win 7 x64 driver issue

[Carol Haynes]

I helped a friend yesterday upgrade her laptop from Vista x86 to 7 x64.

Everything is working except the webcam which is simply listed as an unknown device.

Win 7 compatibility report identified the device correctly before the upgrade and said it was compatible. I have a combined x86/x64 bit driver installation pacakge from Samsung's website. You have to use the setup.exe file for the installtion though (using right click and install on the ini file gives an error saying this method of installation cannot be used).

The problem seems to be that Windows 7 identifies the device incorrectly as an unknown USB Host Controller. Installing the device driver seems to work but the device doesn't pick up the driver.

Uninstalling the device in device manager and telling it to find the correct driver doesn't work (still thinks it is a host controller) and pointing the driver update to the correct driver folderr manually doesn't work (says no compatible hardware).

Anyone have any idea how to tell Windows 7 x64 to ignore its identification and install it as the device I choose? You used to be able to do this in earlier versions of Windows but I can't seem to see how you can in 64-bit windows.

[Ath]

Did you install the driver first, and then inserted the USB connector?

If not, uninstalling and disconnecting, reboot, re-install, then connect could help. (Old-fashioned USB installation procedure)

[Ath]

Unless the camera is internally connected

[Carol Haynes]

Its an internal laptop camera.

I have effectively done that any way by installing the drivers, uninstalling the unknown device and then rebooting should allow the camera to pick up the correct driver. Unfortunately it still makes a wrong selection for device type.

[4wd]

You could try Driver Pack Solution - I've used it to install/update some old hardware in my machine, (TV card), and it worked OK.

It gives you a list of drivers it contains updates for or that need installing but you can choose which ones you actually want it to do.

If nothing else, I've found it good for identifying the specific hardware.

[Carol Haynes]

Just gone and checked the computer and oddly a composite device has installed itself automatically and when I looked it was a USB2.0 camera.

Even odder it seems to have installed a device driver that is nothing to do with the actual installed camera and it isn't listed under imaging devices in the control panel.

Since it is now at least the correct device type I will have another stab at installing the correct driver!

[Carol Haynes]

Now it works! Which is good news. Thanks for the suggestions. Still not sure how it fixed itself

[IainB]

...Still not sure how it fixed itself

The explanation could possibly lie in the fact that the Windows 7 GUI was based on an AI design research project called FAKIR, from PARC (the Palo Alto Research Centre in Madras).
The FAKIR AI contains all of the text from Deepak Chopra's:

• Quantum Healing: Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine ISBN 0-553-34869-8
• Escaping the Prison of the Intellect ISBN 1-878-42456-4

When there is a system problem, FAKIR's subroutine MANTRA kicks into action and cycles the entire text of these two books iteratively through RAM until the system believes itself to be fixed. Windows 7 is thus a self-healing AI system.

Not a lot of people know this.

[Carol Haynes]

That would account for a lot - and sounds perfectly reasonable to me 

[IainB]