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I'm weirded out. I have an Acer Aspire 5515 series laptop which has a webcam built in. When I open Cheese, it says: "no device found". Camorama says: "Could not connect to video device. Please check connection".

Neither lspci nor lsusb contain any records that can be a webcam. It's almost like there is no webcam in the system at all.

~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (Internal gfx)
00:06.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (PCI Express Port 2)
00:07.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS690 PCI to PCI Bridge (PCI Express Port 3)
00:12.0 SATA controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 Non-Raid-5 SATA
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI0)
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI1)
00:13.4 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB (OHCI4)
00:13.5 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 USB Controller (EHCI)
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 14)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 IDE
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SB600 PCI to LPC Bridge
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS690M [Radeon X1200 Series]
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x / AR542x Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02)

~$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 046d:c045 Logitech, Inc. Optical Mouse

Help.

P.S.: Well, I'm beginning to think that the webcam is simply physically broken. I see no other explanation for it not to show up in lsusb.

Scott Severance
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Stann
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3 Answers3

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Check if you have a switch button and certify that the camera is turned "on".

This switch could be on one of the function keys (accessible by using the Fn key).

Or as a separate button in a row, near the power button.

David Foerster
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desgua
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  • thanks. but there is nothing like that anywhere on laptop, I looked for it... IMHO - it looks like webcam is just physically broken. – Stann Dec 31 '11 at 17:52
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    Just had one of those "doh!" moments :) Cheers – Emil L Mar 26 '13 at 20:32
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well. I tried Linux Mint and Fedora and also Windows 7 but no dice - it's simply not being detected. Basically - as long as there is no webcam in lsusb output - you can be pretty sure that it's hardware issue as most webcams in laptops are actually wired up as USB devices.

So there - my webcam is physically dead.

Stann
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  • I have the same problem with an Acer Aspire 7560 laptop and there are tons of similar situations mentioned on the Web. Also I found an advice to uptade BIOS http://askubuntu.com/questions/451314/webcam-install-not-listed-by-lsusb but even this step has problems. In my laptop's BIOS version is reported as 2.02, while the latest version on the acer web site is 1.07. I did not suspect that acer is such a problematic brand. – d.k Aug 19 '15 at 11:40
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    Mine is also not showing up in the lsusb output. But it did work for a few seconds today. So I don't think it's dead. Just not seen. – Stephane Jan 20 '17 at 10:45
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    I think it's very unlikely that the webcam is physically damaged for so many people. – Alberto Salvia Novella Feb 25 '22 at 11:30
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Activating the webcam was indeed the answer :

my button looks like this : (MSI Leopard Pro)

enter image description here

bloub
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