A while back my sister gave me her damaged old webcam. The microphone on it doesn't work and I had to fix the USB connection by attaching part of a wooden stick to it to ensure it stayed in the right shape. This was a Lifecam VX-6000.

Earlier I bought the Lifecam VX-5500. I uninstalled the current Lifecam software and downloaded the new stuff from the Microsoft website and installed it. For a few moments it worked just fine. A reboot later and it doesn't work at all.

There is a shared issue with both webcams: If you run the Lifecam dashboard, it freezes instantly with a 'Lifecam.exe has stopped responding'. I searched for that and it reccomended a reinstall. I did that, and it still persists.

With the VX-5500 it does the same, but if you try to run the webcam in MSN Messenger it will freeze it entirely and cause MSN Messenger to crash. In the Audio/Video set up the microphone aspect of the webcam responds perfectly fine, but it will crash when it tries to load up the webcam in the video preview.

Changing the USB slot doesn't affect it.

If run on Skype, it will cause Skype to instantly not respond if I try to use video.



Any suggestions? I really would like to keep this webcam. It seems like an underlying problem if two similar but different webcams are affected by the same issues.

Cheers.