Strange occurance on integrated web cam failure
by BobNutfield from LinuxQuestions.org on (#5CJX1)
Hello Everyone
I use an old Dell 6420 laptop for most of my work and up until today it has worked flawlessly with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. I rarely use a the integrated web cam but I had Zoom meeting to attend and opened Cheese to test the camera. It worked fine, but was very dark so I opened GUVCVIEW to adjust the brightness (I stupidly didn't know this could be done within Cheese.) While doing this, the program froze and I had to close it. When I reopened Cheese, the camera would no longer provide an image. The web cam light comes on and the screen is somewhat illuminated, but there is nothing on the screen. No settings change anything. I reinstalled both programs with no change. I installed a more sophisticated web cam program (Webcamoid) with the same results.
The hardware appears to work and it still shows up in hardware queries (LSPCI). If I open the program from the terminal there are no errors. I'm at a loss to figure this one out.
Anyone have any ideas or experienced anything similar? If the hardware has failed, I would have thought the light would no longer work and that it would even be found by the kernel.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
I use an old Dell 6420 laptop for most of my work and up until today it has worked flawlessly with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. I rarely use a the integrated web cam but I had Zoom meeting to attend and opened Cheese to test the camera. It worked fine, but was very dark so I opened GUVCVIEW to adjust the brightness (I stupidly didn't know this could be done within Cheese.) While doing this, the program froze and I had to close it. When I reopened Cheese, the camera would no longer provide an image. The web cam light comes on and the screen is somewhat illuminated, but there is nothing on the screen. No settings change anything. I reinstalled both programs with no change. I installed a more sophisticated web cam program (Webcamoid) with the same results.
The hardware appears to work and it still shows up in hardware queries (LSPCI). If I open the program from the terminal there are no errors. I'm at a loss to figure this one out.
Anyone have any ideas or experienced anything similar? If the hardware has failed, I would have thought the light would no longer work and that it would even be found by the kernel.
Any help is greatly appreciated.