Originally Posted by stp

Probably because he didn't know more. A lot of primary tech support seems lost if they step outside the standard FAQ walkthroughs.

Originally Posted by LoathsomePete

Do you have a usb drive? While at work you download it and put it on that, then when you go home install it from the drive. I keep a folder full of the drivers for all my laptop's hardware so whenever I have to reformat (which is semi frequent), they're all in one place and I can immediately begin to install them.

Originally Posted by Freebase Dali

Computer malfunctions can be from any number of things. I can't say with any certainty without physically checking it myself or knowing absolutely everything you've done with it. But certain things do help to point to likely causes. If it worked before, but suddenly stopped working, it's still either a hardware or a software problem. You have to figure out what you did from the point where it worked until the point where it didn't.

Obviously, you can go overboard and wipe the whole computer and reinstall everything to determine whether it's a software issue or not. If it is, you'll probably fix it. You just won't know what caused it and might do it again. The reason that's suggested so often is because it's usually quicker and easier than actually tracking down the problem, but it comes at the cost of starting from scratch. Fortunately you would be able to back up any pertinent data prior to doing this.

Another option is to use your last known good configuration, or reverting to a previous restore point. This is less drastic than a complete wipe, but there's no guarantee that it will solve the issue.

Ultimately, you can decide to do the detective work and try to figure out what changed, or you can just go back to a working restore point, or if that fails, revert back to the factory image and have to reinstall all the software you've installed since you had the PC. If I were you, I'd do the less-drastic stuff first. I just have limited information, so I can't recommend anything beyond that, besides just telling you to make sure that the computer is, indeed, seeing the camera (Device Manager), and whether the most recent drivers are installed or reinstalled. Apart from that, you can start uninstalling other 3rd party software that you've installed since the time it was working to now, and see if any of them were conflicting.

Just do the least-drastic/crazy stuff first.