Ok.. I was given an old M9A to fix up.. it had a chinese version of XP on it so I wiped the disk and installed english version of XP pro.. there were a few unknown devices but did manage to find what they were and install the drivers for them.. but the camera driver wasn't there and it didn't list any other unknown devices.. I figured out that it was a vmicro usb camera, installed the driver for it and the camera worked.. the device was listed under imaging devices. now here's the problem. the camera driver doesn't seem to "stick" .I lose the driver on reboot and then I sometimes can't install it again.. Oh I should mention that trying to install the driver via the installation program doesn't ever seem to work.. I have to install manually.
I have two versions of the driver but they both do the same thing. the one I have installed at the moment is listed in device manager as usbvm321, driver date 10/24/2005, driver version 321.1.1024.34
I'm thinking that maybe the camera hardware is faulty.. sometimes It'll say.. usb vmicro camera found .. and I'll have to install the driver.. I thought maybe it was a intermittent usb cable for the camera but when it's working I can move the display around and the camera doesn't drop out.. only seem to lose the driver on a reboot.
I don't think I've ever seen a device just go missing from the device manager, it's got me puzzled.
a bit more history .. the girl the got the laptop from said the camera never worked and she always used an external one.. I've had the display apart (I needed to replace the backlight in the LCD screen) everything "looks" ok (camera/wire)
any advice you can offer will be appreciated..
edit: I guess I should put in that the OS is xp pro - sp3 with all MS security updates and mobo and other drivers done from ASUS site
