How to Fix Dell Inspiron Webcam on Windows 10

We are moving to a remote workforce in these times of COVID 19, and while for many workers in the United States this is the norm; it can be a big change for others. At Boxaid, of course, all of our employees are working from home. We realized the benefit of this 13 years ago when we opened our doors. We communicate with our customers via a regular telephone connection, but many other companies use applications such as

Zoom

,

webex

, Where

Skype

. These apps work well for sharing presentations, talking, whiteboarding, and in many cases you can see the other party through a webcam.

Sometimes you can get by without webcam functionality, especially if you've just rolled out of bed. Sometimes it is essential to use the webcam when you are used to meeting colleagues or contacts in a physical space. Considering the times we live in, Boxaid phone calls are through the roof. We are working overtime to serve our customers as quickly as possible. Today we came across a Dell Inspiron webcam running Windows 10 (the Dell Inspiron is an all-in-one desktop, not a laptop) that just wasn't showing video.

Troubleshooting the Integrated Webcam

We tried all the usual things like uninstalling the built-in webcam driver, rebooting, and checking for hardware changes. Nothing. Windows

has

reinstalled the built-in webcam, but when we started the Windows Camera app, you can see it was looking for hardware for about 2 seconds, then it would fail. It would repeat this in a constant loop. We tried this with the client's Zoom app and the same thing would happen. Image is displayed for about 1 second, then try again. It was almost like the webcam wasn't getting enough power.

We of course went to Dell's website and did a hardware scan and Dell's support site showed all the potential drivers for the Inspiron and the built-in webcam. had no options to install a driver. We of course followed Microsoft's recommendation for the camera to work to no avail.

@Kohls I have a Dell laptop and the camera the webcam would not work when I finally got it working I shared picture… https://t.co/yFYfo2lTZI

— Miguel007 Wed Mar 13 02:12:16 +0000 2019

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13753/windows-10-camera-does-not-work

We did the following according to Microsoft:

1. Make sure apps like Zoom and Skype were allowed to use the camera We uninstalled Norton which was definitely interfering with the webcam3. We of course uninstalled the webcam and rebooted, letting Microsoft reinstall the webcam4. Went to power management and made sure the webcam wasn't turned off in sleep mode

Download Dell Webcam Central

Unfortunately none of these things worked and we spent at least an hour doing the troubleshooting steps above. We were running out of options. We finally came across this

Dell item

on their website which recommended us to install

Dell Webcam Central

which is an app that does a few extra things with the webcam, like taking photos and videos. But it has nothing to do with the driver used by Windows.

Since we tried everything else, we tried. Sure enough, after installing the Dell webcam software and rebooting, Zoom, Skype and the Windows Camera app finally showed us a video image! Why on earth did that old webcam software fix the problem? We have no idea. But we know that there was no official driver for Windows 10 and this user upgraded from Windows 7 some time ago. They probably never noticed it since they've never used their webcam before. Stay healthy and if you need computer support or computer virus removal, call us at Boxaid.

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