Stumped Over Webcam problem

[stephenmcavoy]

Hi, i'm running an FZ21s on XP and until recently everything has been pretty ok thanks to all your help you gave me downgrading back to XP. However recently I had a major USB issue over a MIDI box I was trying to install. Eventually I managed to get the MIDI box working but as it started working my webcam stoped working. The camera worked fine before, and if I do a 'system restore' I can get it back but then MIDI is dead..... catch 22. The MIDI issue is pretty temperamental and I'd prefer to leave it alone hence I'm trying to find out how to get the webcam back.
It seems to show up in Device Manager as 'USB device'. I've tried installing the FZ29 xp drivers as this worked before with no probs. I've tried uninstalling the device and reinstalling, disabling and re-enabling. Nothing seems to work.
I've been using a handy little prog called USBdeview to check what USB devices are installed on what ports and if the camera is indeed 'USB device' then it shares the same hub as my MIDI box and my external soundcard. Perhaps this is the problem.

Anyone know if theres a way to move the camera to a different hub??? ....or if theres another solution to the problem.

Many thanks in advance

Steve

[stephenmcavoy]

just to follow...

I've attached some USBdeview HTML reports. These show the USB device lists, including USB hubs in the before and after states also.

I personally can't understand what the problem is but you can see 'USBdeview BEFORE' shows that the camera is installed under 'Sony Visual Communication Camera VGP-VCC8' and not on any Hub (see Hub/port column). 'USBdeview AFTER' shows this is missing in fact I can't now find any entry that even looks like it could be the camera. Everytime I install the driver it says its ready and working [I can see it listed in add/remove programs] but everytime I reboot Windows searches for drivers for 'USB Device'.

I've also included a snapshot of the yellow questions in Device Manager. You can see there is a bluetooth issue as well. I've installed the bluetooth drivers and windows no longers searches for drivers for this on start-up yet as you can see it is still listed in Device Manager with a question mark. Perhaps both issues are connected???

I hope this is not too much information but I figured it might help anyone kind enough to shed some light on this.
Hope you can help.

Steve