I think I've found something. I installed an HP Photosmart Printer recently and when I installed the drivers they installed a bunch of other junk that I really didn't want. I see that there is now an app called "HP Webcam" in the HP folder of Start>Programs. This app (which is a Vimicro app) works and gives me a preview screen when I click on it. The old icon, called "HP Pavilion Webcam" which is in its own folder in Start>Programs no longer works. When I click the old icon, the blue light comes on and then there is a Video Preview Error saying to Please check the device connection and make sure that the device is not being used by another application or user. The icon shortcut points to "HP Webcam 1000", a device in My Computer. Opening it directly gives the same error.
The problem is that in all my other imaging apps (DSI, Amcap, HandyAVI, etc.) they show "HP Pavilion Webcam" and, from inside the app, it is working. I don't know why this is so, but they predate the printer install and that may have something to do with it. I am loath to start deleting things because I don't want to mess up my other apps. Is there a way of editing the device selections in iCamSource to point it to the working executable? Contacting HP Support is an all-day affair with little hope of resolution.
Wow, progress. It turns out that I do get an active Start button, it just takes a long time to show up. This time I waited it out and I got the image. I could even watch the clock incrementing. This should narrow things down a lot.
I check DirectX and it seemed that it was not the latest (ver. 9.0c) so I downloaded what was supposed to be the latest (Ver. 9.26.1590) and ran it. It completed without error but dxdiag still shows 9.0c even after the reboot. I'm starting to feel snake-bit here.
I didn't think that the name & password would crash the app, just that something else in the Registry might be having an effect. There's a lot of iCam stuff in there.
I copied and pasted the URL for the camera into the URL box on the Ethernet/Wi-Fi tab. The Camera Login I left blank and I selected the radio button for MJPEG. I did not check the boxes for Auto-start or Port Range. I have my Login and Password entered. The Start button is still grayed. I opened the URL in Firefox and can see the picture but it isn't moving even though the clock is incrementing.
No I can reinstall the latest version but it still shows my old name & password (i.e., it's reading info from the Registry) and it still crashes. I tried pasting in the URL you gave me but it leaves the Start button grayed out.
Uninstalling is leaving a lot of stuff untouched in the Registry. When I reinstall I have the same problem. Is there any solution other than doing a line-by-line surgery of the Registry (always a bit risky)?
I uninstalled using Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs, rebooted and ran the install from the link. It went off without a hitch but when I opened it, my name & password were already entered and it did the same crash when I clicked Start. Next I tried uninstalling using the uninstall.exe in the icamsource folder but when I tried to reinstall it says it can't continue because I have an earlier version installed. I tried again, this time deleting the folder that was created but got the same message. Is something stuck in the registry? Is there an ini file somewhere?
Like I said, after the app closed I still had 3 processes. I killed them and then tried again. This time I only got one process and when the app crashed it closed like it was supposed to. In other words I couldn't repeat the 3 process condition.
The wait between clicking the Start button and getting error message is about 10 sec. When I click the Don't Send button on the error message, the app closes immediately. I never see a video stream (although the blue light for the webcam does come on) but the view screen does turn from gray to black. The webcam is described in the drop=down list as "HP Pavilion Webcam", same as in other apps. The only other thing in the box was "Hauppage WinTV PVR USB2 Encoder" but depowering it and taking it out had no effect. Windows Task Manager only shows Mozilla Firefox and iCamSource Preferences 1.3.5 running and, unless I click Start, the blue light is not lit. I do notice under Procesesses (in Task Manager) that there are three instances of iCamSource.exe running.
It works with Amcap. HandyAVI, SparkCast and DeepSkyImaging. I have already run the C++ Resdistributable Package. I have not run the .NET Framework update because I am already running .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 with two Hotfixes. Re-updating would not be a trivial action as MS says you should do a complete removal of the old installation first and I have concerns about messing things up for my existing applications (I do a lot of video astronomy).
I click the icon and get the Preferences window. The HP Pavillion Webcam is selected as is "No Audio" (I tried the sound card too but it made no diff). When I click the start button I get the blue light indicating that my webcam is working then after a short wait I get the following message:
iCamSource.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
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