T520/Win 10 camera non-function

[Rletson]

This is not just a problem with 400/500 series Thinkpads, but I thought I'd start here.

On a T520 Win 10/64 system, I noticed that the the Fn+F6 hotkey didn't automatically turn on the camera, even though the camera app did engage it fine. In the course of fiddling with the camera drivers to see whether the hotkey could be made to work, the driver-rollback option stopped working, and now none of the supposedly official drivers from Lenovo or MS can engage the camera at all. (The error message is <NoCamerasAreAttached>.)

I know that the camera hardware is OK, and I know that there is a Win 10 configuration with working camera drivers, because I retained the old drive when I cloned the system to a larger SSD, and when I boot from that one, everything works and the driver list is different. The problem is that Lenovo's official driver lists for the 520 stop with Win 7/64 (which don't work for me), and the 530 Win 10 drivers don't work. And I can't find a way to transfer the working drivers from the old boot drive.

On the munged-up system, Device Manager claims that the camera drivers are present and correct, but I notice that where the working system lists Cameras/Integrated Camera with Microsoft as the manufacturer, it is now under Imaging Devices/Integrated Camera with Ricoh as the manufacturer. Windows 10 seems to have a problem identifying the device itself. I would think that the reasonable solution would be to find the driver-installation package that matches the actual hardware, but neither the Lenovo nor Microsoft sites seem to make that possible. And Lenovo seems to think that noboby runs Win 10 on a T520. (Well, after this, maybe I won't. I still have a working Win 7 system drive for this machine.)

[Rletson]

Oy me. I finally stumbled on a solution. The device is a USB camera, as I discovered after Idontknowhowmany trips through the Update Drivers function of Device Manager. I don't know why Windows is so gnomic about the hardware components, or why there isn't a comprehensive hardware-census app that supplies the various device names and (when appropriate) manufacturers and versions. Or why Lenovo pretends that the T520 doesn't need some degree of Win 10 support. I still don't know where I'd find the USB camera driver package if the one on this system got corrupted.

Oh, and Fn+F6 apparently isn't supported, which suggests that the driver package is not Lenovo-specific.

[RealBlackStuff]

T520 W7 uses this one: https://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/p ... ca15ww.exe

In your 'working' W10, go into device manager, it should show you which driver the webcam uses.
I've found that sometimes (regardless of which laptop) certain items don't function if the chipset driver has not been installed.
Can't find one for T520, but this one should work: https://support.lenovo.com/se/en/downloads/ds103448
(X1 and X1-Hybrid came out the same time as the T520)

[Rletson]

Thanks for the suggestion. I've never had occasion to dig that deep into device-support software, and I'm not sure exactly what to look for in Device Manager. In the System Devices section there's the Intel Management Engine Interface, which is listed as a driver (version 11.0.0.1157) and working properly.

I suspect that the chipset driver might be the item under "Other Devices" called the Base System Device, which has no drivers ("not installed" and Code 28)--and its category is popped out with a ? on its icon. (Not a yellow triangle, though.)

I'm more than a little reluctant to mess about with something that deep in the OS--the 520 really is working in all the ways I've asked it to, now that I have the camera accessible again.

Nothing expands one's understanding of the nittiest of computational gritties like wrangling a new OS.