Lenovo Integrated Camera again working on Windows 7

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My Lenovo X200 notebook comes with an integrated webcam and I’m using it pretty often for Skype calls etc. But some time ago it stopped working. After reinstalling drivers, taking to the Lenovo support hotline, installing exactly the driver I was told to it was still broken. Yesterday a Lenovo technician cam to replace the camera (I’m so glad to have on-site support and do not need to send the notebook in), but in the end the new webcam behaves exactly as the first one – just not working.

So I started to debug the problem by myself and figured the following out. Maybe this is just an issue on my machine with my other software installed but maybe this is helpful for someone else.

The driver from the Lenovo webpage is build by the camera vendor Ricoh. That driver package just does not work on my Windows 7 64bit machine. The out-of-the-box Windows 7 driver works just fine!

Find the Camera device in Device Manager

device manager

On the properties sheet choose Update driver

Integrated Camera Properties

Then “Browse my computer for driver software” and  “Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer”

Update Driver Software I

Update Driver Software II

On my machine it only shows up one compatible “USB Video Device” – just use that driver:

Update Driver Software III

If Windows does not find this single one you can select it from the larger list by unchecking “Show compatible hardware” and choosing “Microsoft” / “USB Video Device”:

Update Driver Software VI

For some reason it does not always work the moment I installed the new driver and I had to reboot the machine. After installing the driver the device in device manager is called “USB Video Device” but after the reboot it is for some reason renamed to “Integrated Camera” but still using the Windows driver (that is the important part, you can check it in the properties sheet from within device manager). From now on it was working fine.

After some time Windows suddenly replaced this driver with the Ricoh one and the camera was broken again. To prevent Windows from doing so I uninstalled the driver package from “Programs and Features” in Control Panel.

Upgrading Windows 7 RC to RTM

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Disclaimer: The following is no official advice or anything. I just did it and it worked ON MY MACHINE. Fell free to try but have a backup of your data.

The Windows 7 RTM bits will not allow an upgrade from an earlier version of Windows 7 (e.g. RC or beta). I belief that Microsoft did this to ensure that your new operating system works just fine and no beta and release bits get mixed up.

For the upgrade from the beta version to the release candidate quickly some patch occurred which allowed an upgrade. I used the same one and it works fine on my machine to upgrade Windows 7 RC to RTM.

What’s to do?

You need to change one file on the installation DVD. On way to do this is to copy all files to your computer, change the file and burn a new DVD. Since the upgrade will be run from within the already installed Windows 7 you do not need to boot from this DVD. I just copied all files to a USB drive and run the setup.exe from that drive. I belief you will be able to install Windows also from a directory on you local hard disk containing all the files from the DVD.

In the source folder you will find a text file named cversion.ini. The original file looks like:

[HostBuild]
MinClient=7233.0
MinServer=7100.0

Just change the MinClient number to the build version of you current Windows version. For the Windows 7 RC it will be 7100.

The upgrade should work fine now. But if your new Windows 7 starts acting strange don’t blame Microsoft or me. Always remember you installed it with an unsupported patch.

WinXP network connection problem: Not enough server memory ("Für den Befehl steht nicht genügend Serverspeicher zur Verfügung")

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Hi!

I just found a solution to a problem that was getting on my nerves for quite a time: I am using three computers, all WinXP Pro. They are all connected in one simple network and I don’t use much more than some folders to copy files from here to there. It worked fine for a long time but one day I couldn’t connect to anyone of the computers anymore. I am pretty sure I didn’t change a thing – it just happened. I browsed a lot (and I mean a lot) of websites that are dedicated to this problem. Most of them say (text copied from here):

  1. Start the registry editor (e.g., regedit.exe).
  2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services \lanmanserver\parameters.
  3. Double-click IRPStackSize (or if this registry setting does not exist, create it of type DWORD and ensure the case is correct).
  4. Change the base to decimal, set the value to the default value for your OS, and click OK.
  5. Reboot the computer or restart the “Server service”.

It did not work for me.

But I found the solution two minutes ago one on single German web site: When changing the value of IRPStackSize DON’T CHANGE TO DECIMAL. Change to (or leave it at) hex!.

Hex 30 (= Dec 48) was enough for me and after a reboot it worked again.

What a bug, MS, please fix it!

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