Question How do I fix my webcam (Windows 11 driver issue)

[Hallow69]

Hello everyone,
I have a Lenovo FHD 300 webcam. A few months back my webcam decided to stop working out of the blue. whenever I use my camera, the light turns on but there is no image, and even after I close the app the camera continues to be in use (the light keeps blinking) for some reason. I wrote about this issue in some forums, they told me that this was most definitely a hardware issue, as I'm not getting any image if I tried it with a different system as well (my laptop). Well that was until today, when I had this wild idea that what if this was an issue with windows drivers that have been automatically installed for my camera? So using an OTG cable, I plugged my webcam to my android phone and it works perfectly fine, it is definitely not a hardware issue.
I went to device manager, tried uninstalling and refreshing the device a bunch of time, I scoured the internet for drivers for this webcam, I'm simply not able to get it.
Lenovo has done such a bad job with this webcam that there are no drivers even available in their website.
Windows device manager has a 2006 dated driver for this device installed automatically, I don't know how to change it as well.
Driver Details from device manager

Can someone please help me with how to fix this issue? How do I load in a custom driver that might work with my webcam even though there is no official driver for my webcam?

 

[Lutfij]

Download these drivers;
https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/in/en/...vo-easy-camera-driver-windows-7-32-bit-64-bit
then install them in Compatibility Mode, i.e;
Right click installer>Properties>Compatibility tab>Windows 7(from drop down menu).

If that doesn't work you will need drivers from when the webcam was released, which would be pre Windows 10.

 

[Hallow69]

Download these drivers;
https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/in/en/...vo-easy-camera-driver-windows-7-32-bit-64-bit
then install them in Compatibility Mode, i.e;
Right click installer>Properties>Compatibility tab>Windows 7(from drop down menu).

If that doesn't work you will need drivers from when the webcam was released, which would be pre Windows 10.

Hello there!
I tried this, still doesn't work, the drivers aren't replaced for the camera only, I've tried uninstalling the device, installing from lenovo then restarting, just installing normally as well.
What am I missing here? one more thing is that for the hardware id in my device in device manager, it is non-existent in google, this isn't normal right?
This is what it says my hardware id is :
USB\VID_17EF&PID_4831&REV_5002&MI_00
USB\VID_17EF&PID_4831&MI_00
One more thing is that let's say I open my camera app, the green light for camera turning on comes, but then there's no image (not even black), so I close the camera app, but that green light doesn't go at all, it just stays there even if I uninstall the device or disable it from device manager.

Also one other thing is (not sure if this is useful), when I run this same device in android, the first time I plug it in, I just get a black image and a static sound, I unplug and plug it back in I'm getting perfect video

 

[Hallow69]

Hello there!
I tried this, still doesn't work, the drivers aren't replaced for the camera only, I've tried uninstalling the device, installing from lenovo then restarting, just installing normally as well.
What am I missing here? one more thing is that for the hardware id in my device in device manager, it is non-existent in google, this isn't normal right?
This is what it says my hardware id is :
USB\VID_17EF&PID_4831&REV_5002&MI_00
USB\VID_17EF&PID_4831&MI_00
One more thing is that let's say I open my camera app, the green light for camera turning on comes, but then there's no image (not even black), so I close the camera app, but that green light doesn't go at all, it just stays there even if I uninstall the device or disable it from device manager.

Also one other thing is (not sure if this is useful), when I run this same device in android, the first time I plug it in, I just get a black image and a static sound, I unplug and plug it back in I'm getting perfect video

if I try to manually install drivers from that folder where lenovo easy driver is installed (Updating my current device manager driver), this is what I get

https://imgur.com/a/15rc9Ma

View: https://imgur.com/a/15rc9Ma

 

[Hallow69]

Hello everyone!
I managed to fix this issue, this issue was definitely a driver issue
I tried searching for the product number online, every resources I could find, I couldn't find it's drivers.
Then I decided to try this via linux, so I booted my VM to check if it was working, it wasn't but this webcam was detected as "Sonix Webcam" and not Lenovo. I had already tried installing the drivers for Lenovo FHD 500 to see if would work (it didn't even detect my product obviously) but the file showed up as Sun Plus and not Lenovo.

So I plugged it back in my android phone, and then I looked for the device information , and I found that this was still being detected as Sonix. Sonix manufactures these webcams, Lenovo just puts their branding on them and this might be a reason for the inconsistent driver availabilities between webcams. I tried installing Sonix Easy Camera drivers, it still didn't work but finally I found this Lenovo Sonic Camera Driver link

https://support.lenovo.com/bg/en/do...-sunplus-sonix-for-windows-10-64-bit-notebook

These are meant for notebooks and not desktops, but I went ahead and installed it anyways and now FINALLY IT WORKS!!!!

4 months of not working , a thousand headaches and me literally installing viruses in the name of drivers later, I found the fix to this issue which should not have existed in the first place. Do better Lenovo.