envy 14 webcam and integrated mic not working

[kamskywalker]

I don't have a restore point that far back, and I will not reinstall windows. It would take far too long to do so while keeping all of my data.

And yes, I have tried using multiple softwares.

And I probably won't go get it serviced either, because it is expensive. That said, if you have any resources from people who have serviced it themselves, that would be great, but I suspect you wouldn't share those.

[SeanS]

Well if you are unwilling to reinstall Windows the only other option would be to take the computer apart to find out if it is a hardware issue or not. Here is a post I found while doing some searching on the issue:

"I've been having this problem for the past few months now, and I've finally figured out the problem. It isn't a driver issue. The problem is actually a worn out ribbon connector.between the motherboard and the webcam. I didn't believe this to be the case in the beginning, but it turns out to be the case on mine. Here's what you can do to confirm this is the problem.

Connect your laptop to an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and then close the screen completely. You may have to adust your display settings to make the external monitor the primary screen so that you can access the Start Menu. Next, go into Device Manager and uninstall all items under Universal Serial Bus controllers. Finally, restart the computer. When your computer restarts, you may have to open the screen just enough to access the touchpad and keyboard to login, but only do it just enough so that you can fit your hands in there to type your username and password. As soon as you've logged in, close it back immediately, and keep it closed until the system goes through the reinstall process of all USB devices. This could take 10 minutes or more. Once this is done, still keeping the screen closed, use the external mouse to browse to Device Manager. You should see your HP Webcam present again, successfully installed under Imaging Devices. (If it doesn't, you might want to install and then uninstall the driver package sp34746.exe onto your system to reset the device, uninstall the USB devices again, and then restart. It should definitely work, then).

Here's the problem, though. As soon as you open your screen again wide enough, the webcam craps out. To make this clearly demonstrable, before you open it up, open up your CyberLink YouCam software. Once YouCam is loaded, slowly open the screen. Once you reach the point where the connector is messed up, the YouCam software picture will freeze, and it will throw an error at you.

My understanding on this issue is that the only way to fix it is to be lucky enough to just have a loose cable and not a damaged one, and be able to take the laptop apart enough to more fully connect the ribbon cable. Otherwise, the part needs to be replaced. See the following message from another forum member stating that HP charges exorbitantly for this if you are past your warranty, though he does give a short how-to on how to possibly correct the problem if it's just loose: http://goo.gl/i60q3..."


I would highly recommend against this especially if you are unfamiliar with doing things like this. You could cause more damage in the process (ask me how I know 😞 )

Best of luck,
Sean

[kamskywalker]

I will try this and get back to you. May take a while as I don't have an external monitor handy.