Thinkpads Forum

Hello, members of the ThinkPad community! This is my first post, so I hope I'm doing everything the right way in terms of this post.

I have an X200 that I bought used from a friend. I am very happy with it and everything works as expected except for the Integrated Camera. I installed all necessary drivers from Lenovo's website, and the camera is recognized in Device Manager. However, if I go to a website such as http://www.webcam-mirror.com, which I use quite frequently to test webcams (it uses Flash Player to display your webcam signal), the camera LED turns on, but all I get is a black signal with no image whatsoever.

I have thought of the possibility that it might be disabled in the BIOS or something, but I could find no such option. Could the camera itself be faulty? It seems unlikely to me that such a simple device would fail, but I'm open to the possibility. Is my motherboard faulty? I am running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.

Your help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
--MunkyCheez

EDIT: i just remembered that this machine used to run Ubuntu before I purchased it, and IIRC it showed a green-tinted, severely-distorted image when viewing the webcam signal. I only get a black signal in Windows 7. Probably the camera itself then?

If I had to guess I would say the cable connecting the camera to the motherboard is worn out.

From personal experience, this cable is prone to malfunctioning. The same cable is used to connect the LCD and Thinklight to the motherboard. On my X200 the Thinklight started flickering and eventually failed due to a bad cable and on my brother-in-law's X201 the LCD was flickering due to the same problem. Replacing this cable fixed both issues.

Sandstorm83 wrote:If I had to guess I would say the cable connecting the camera to the motherboard is worn out.

From personal experience, this cable is prone to malfunctioning. The same cable is used to connect the LCD and Thinklight to the motherboard. On my X200 the Thinklight started flickering and eventually failed due to a bad cable and on my brother-in-law's X201 the LCD was flickering due to the same problem. Replacing this cable fixed both issues.

Thanks for your reply, Sandstorm. That's really interesting. I haven't experienced any flickering of the ThinkLight or distortion of the LCD. Is there any way you know of to test that cable? Would visual inspection reveal a damaged cable? I would hate to buy a new cable and have it not fix the issue...