Built in web cam issue (Worst IT experience of my life) HELP

albanga

Hello all,

Let me just start of by saying this! Dont EVER and i mean EVER! buy a HP Pavilion TX1000 tablet PC. They are without a doubt the biggest hunk of junks i have ever ever ever witnessed. I have problem after problem with this stupid machine and just my luck it is the CEOs stupid machine!

I'll give you a quick backgound, these machines by default come with vitsa home. I was new to vista and thought id give it a shot, so 10,000 ripped out hairs later i have a "fairly" stable XP operating system now installed. Im not going to get into it too much but almost all drivers are installed and im fairly happy with where i am after rolling back from vista.

NOW, the CEO has a thing for video conferancing. He thinks its the be all and end all and should be ITs top prioirty. We currently have 2 IT staff, myself who does admin and support and the IT manager supporting 160 staff members, but lets put all our work on the backburner because we need video conferancing!!!!

If you have not already figured im not a happy camper!!!!!!!!!

Anyway to the issue at hand, so i have the driver for the built in webcam which was downloaded of the vendor website for XP. The camera has a small HP app that when viewed loads the camera so you can see yourself. When i run this the camera works beautiful! Looks great and runs awesome. The problem is this! when i connect to another PC using anything from MSN messenger to netmeeting the image goes to the other persons PC upside down!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The kicker is this when using netmeeting you have picture in picture, when im looking at the webcam i see the other person fine and the little image of me in the bottom corneer looks fine also, but the other person im connected to sees my picture upside down. I have tried connecting to several different webcams and they all view it the same so we cant blame a single computer.

Its something this stupid webcam is doing when sending the feed. At the source is fine but when it reaches its destination its upside down.

So pretty please with sugar on top does anyone out there have a solution for me. This laptop is sending me to the brink of insanity and i am 1 day from throwing it out the window! Any ideas, i beg of you

leefdaddy

Is the laptop upside down?

jahman182

Maybe the camera was installed upside down from the factory...................what do I know, just making a suggestion.
Oh call HP and yell at the Tech that answers. LOL

Mishra

Did you try multiple drivers?

blargoe

If it's built in to his laptop, your best resource for this problem would probably be HP Support. Is it still under warranty support?

Schluep

I know two people with the HP Pavilion TX1000 that absolutely love them. They are used in a medical office and were able to get all of their medical software working properly and incorporate them into their network made of largely XP machines easily. They had gateway tablets before that. They are both running Vista however, but have had no problems at all with them. In fact, they have been trying to get me interested tablet PC's for a while (even though I don't have a particular need or interest).

An aquaintence of mine installed XP on his ASUS G1S (manufacturer had Vista on it) and ran into similar issues with the webcam. He mentioned that he called ASUS and they said that the webcam only fits into the PC one way so it could not be put in upside down. It is possible that the camerca manufacturer assembled it incorrectly, but that would have been caught in testing and was highly unlikely. Ultimately it ended up being of course a driver issue. The native drivers for the webcam were designed for Vista and the drivers he installed created the problem. After downloading several other drivers available he found a set that work and had the image properly displayed.

If you visit http://www.testmycam.com/ it will allow you to test the webcam is it would appear to someone on the other end of a video conferencing session. This would be helpful in case the drivers have it set upside down but the user inverted the image so it looks properly on the tablet PC he is using.

I would recommend seeing if the webcam displays a proper image on any of the other HP Pavilion TX1000 running XP and then compare the drivers. If they are different you know which ones to try.

Just out of curiosity, what problems were you having with Vista?

georgemc

Normally there's a utility that comes with the webcam for adjusting settings. The settings include upside down, mirrored, etc. Sometimes you can also get to these settings from the videoconferencing software that you're using.

George

taktsoi

georgemc wrote:

Normally there's a utility that comes with the webcam for adjusting settings. The settings include upside down, mirrored, etc. Sometimes you can also get to these settings from the videoconferencing software that you're using.

George

i m 2nd to this.

albanga

Hey guys,

O.k to answer all your questions;

The camera is definitely not upside down as i stated when i run netmeeting and see myself my image is the correct way up. Only when it reaches the other computer does it get turned upside down. So from my side the web camera is displaying properly, the person viewing me gets my image upside down.

I have tried several drivers all to no avail. There is a vista driver with firmware upgrade that i am scared to run because i have a feeling the results with be undoable and would require a complete re-install. Although i am starting to lean to try this as nothing else has worked.

Lastly there is no options to invert the image in any of the applications installed. That being said is there an application i could possibly download to manipulate my camera?

And believe me whoever told you these are good laptops needs to get there head checked! They are garbage!

Schluep

albanga wrote:

And believe me whoever told you these are good laptops needs to get there head checked! They are garbage!

Haha, I know it wasn't intentional since I didn't go into great detail but I just waned to point out that the Doctor that said this to me is a Neurological one, so he is probably "checking heads" most of the day . He likes having the tablet PC to draw on notes on patients and models of their nervous systems.

Have you checked with not only HP but also the webcam manufacturer for XP drivers for the webcam? You are probably not th only one using the Pavilion TX1000 to have this problem.

The webcam issue seems to be VERY common doing a quick search on th internet and also various hardware forums. You may want to check with HP Tech Support or if there are any HP forums regarding drivers that work well in XP for the webcam.