A friend of mine is having some trouble with the integrated webcam on her laptop (a Dell Inspiron 1525 IIRC, at least that looks like it), and it's a few months out of warranty so I said I'd have a look at it. Except I don't really know what I'm looking for. Basically, the webcam becomes disconnected and connected depending on the angle the screen is tilted at, so if the screen is moved to a certain angle the "Found new hardware" tray icon appears, similar to if any other USB device is connected, then Windows goes through the usual procedure of searching for a driver etc. Now I'm assuming that it's been dropped at some point and the connection has come loose, so I was just going to open it up and have a look. However, I don't have much experience in dealing with laptop hardware so I have no idea what I'm looking for, or where it would be located. Any help would be greatly appreciated before I set about destroying an otherwise working laptop
It sounds like a loose or damanged connection which is why the "found new hardware" keeps popping up but it would probably turn out as "device may not work properly". Anyway, open up the screen case (there will probably be lots of screws to take off) and trace the webcam wire to the motherboard. Hopefully you may be able to find a fault there. Careful not to rip apart the screen wires and the wireless. However the majority of laptops are hard to take apart and fix and put it back together. They are more fragile than desktops computers and there is no standard layout on laptops so parts are harder to find. If it breaks further its your responsibility which is why I always say no to fixing laptops (unless its the RAM, HDD or wireless - easily accessible). Personally, I wouldn't take up the job.
Hmmm, wise words I think. I guess it's not a serious issue, more of an annoyance really. I did say that I may not be able to do anything about it, but it's probably not worth it if I'll do more harm than good. Still, I've seen some of the "technicians" these companies send out to do warranty repairs, and it doesn't seem to hard to be able to a better job than they do
The point is that if they break the laptop their company pays for the damage. If you break it, who pays for it?
