Hello guys, I wonder if you can help me. I have a dell xps 17 with ubuntu 12.04 installed - last installation was probably 3-4 months ago. ANyway, all of a sudden the webcam stopped working. No idea what has happened. I noticed it because it wasn't picking up the video on skype. I thought it was the person I was talking to that had problems, but after having called a few more people I realized that the problem was mine. Unfortunately I don't know much about cameras so I wouldn't really know what to do to find out what's wrong. I have found a thread somewhere saying that the camera can be tested using an application called Cheese, which I have downloaded and installed but everytime I run it, it says that an error has occurred.
ANy idea what I should do?
thanks

You just run cheese!
https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Cheese/Tour

Actually, maybe Microsoft have messed with Skype (they own it).

I don't use video with Skype - it's a bit intrusive.

well cheese doesn't seem to run that's the thing. ANd as an update to the above, I don't get an error message everytime I run cheese, it just stops on it's own.
I seriously doubt that Microsoft has messed with skype so that it causes issues to my camera. It had been working fine till a few days ago. I have also run lsusb -n, I have attached the log file (can't paste here it is too long)maybe it will help somebody to understand what's going on:

Attached Files

lsusb.txt (44.8 KB, 6 views)

If it's an external USB webcam (and your last post leads me to think that it is), the simplest test is to plug it into another computer, even if it's a friend's computer for three minutes of testing. If it doesn't work there, it's almost certain that the webcam is bust.

Hi no it's not an external camera, it's inbuilt. Is there any way we can test it - like hardware testing or similar?

Deleted.

You could boot to a live CD of something and test with the Live CD. If it works, it would definitely prove that you have a software problem. If it doesn't work, it's not conclusively a hardware problem until you test the Live CD with another computer with another box with a like camera.

Another test is to try an external camera and see whether it works (if you don't have one, maybe you can borrow one from a friend for a little while). If it works, it would be one more indication that problem is a hardware problem with the built-in camera. Of course, the only conclusive test is to test the camera directly, and that is likely a job for a professional computer tech.

This YouTube video might help: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNdXe8d11B8

One further possibility to try isThis will give a lot of output.
Hopefully, you will see some info on your web cam (make/model etc).
Then its down to a Google search...

All right, something weird just happened. I have dual booting on my machine so I thought I'd log in into windows and chech the camera there, just to make sure that it was actually broken. It did work there, so I thought that it was a ubuntu problem. I logged back in ubuntu, and guess what? the camera now works again...Not sure what to do now, as in, what should I get out of it?

That perhaps you should have tried your webcam on an alternate OS (if easily available).
Would have saved you downloading a live Linux CD.

Even in Linux, a reboot can sometimes untangle stuff.

Glad it's working.

Hi frankbell, but that's the thing, I have rebooted a few times and it didn't work. Only after I logged into windows, tried the camera there, found it worked and finally rebooted into Ubuntu brought the camera back, so it wasn't strictly a reboot as such. Yes, I am glad it works again, I am just worried about what caused it really, but I suspect that we will never know, won't we :-)?