I brought a brand new webcam, HP 1080/720p thing with autofocus. It came in last week and worked fine. Windows loaded the driver right as I installed it but now a few days later I plugged it in and nothing.
Windows doesn’t acknowledge that it’s plugged in at all. no sound, no popups, it doesn’t appear in device manager, nothing.
The power light on the camera does come on though.
How do I go about trouble shooting this? I tried messing with drivers but it won’t let me repair or update them if the camera is not plugged in.
Try completely removing the drivers for the device via device manager (right click and do ‘uninstall drivers’) and see if when you re-insert it if Windows tries to install it again.
Plug it into a different machine if possible. I’m leaning towards USB cable damage, this will confirm it. Webcams will install using the generic video driver if you don’t install the software, so I highly doubt it’s a driver problem.
Just because power is being supplied doesn’t mean that it’s good, it just means that the VCC and ground are making a connection, either of the data wires could be damaged.