I somehow seem to have lost the driver for my camera. When I connect the
camera to the PC, there’s no further window that should normally pop up. I get
a yellow triangle in the device manager and the icon suggesting
troubleshooting. When I try to do the same, I’m told the driver is missing. Can
you help?
In this excerpt from
Answercast #89, I look first at the most obvious place to find a missing
driver: the manufacturer’s website.
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Missing driver for a camera
Well, yeah. The very first thing I would do is… find the driver.
Where do you find the driver? Go to the manufacturer’s site.
In your case I believe you mentioned it’s a Canon camera (elsewhere). So, I would go to the Canon website; go to their support site and locate the drivers for your specific camera model that will install on your specific version of Windows.
This is very common advice – and the reason I pull this question out is because so many people fail to think of this step.
Drivers from manufacturer
If you have a piece of hardware (like a camera, or a video camera, or a scanner, or a printer, or a who knows what) that you’re connecting to your computer – and the computer complains about the driver being out of date (or not available, or whatnot) then step number one is to go to the web site of that hardware manufacturer and see if they can provide you with the driver you need.
Nine times out of ten, they absolutely can. Nine times out of ten you can download that driver from their web site. You can install it on your machine, reconnect your camera and everything just works.
So that’s my advice. Go to the manufacturer’s web site and see if they have exactly what you need. I’ll bet they do.
(Transcript lightly edited for readability.)
Next from Answercast 89- Why do my quick launch shortcuts sometimes stop working?
Leo, will moving from an old XP computer to a new Windows 7 computer require that new drivers be installed on the new PC in order for the old devices (used with XP) to work right with the new PC? I guess there is also the possibility that those old devices may not even have updated drivers for Windows 7 — correct? (Just wondering if buying a new Windows 7 PC probably means buying new devices for it, too.) Thanks…
@Yeppers
When moving to a new OS, it is sometimes necessary to get drivers for the external devices, unless those drivers are included in Windows, which is also sometimes the case.
As you said, in other cases the driver is simply not available and it is necessary to get a new external device. That happened to me with a scanner once. I had to buy a new one. In the cases of my phone and camera, the new drivers were available on their websites.
The newer version of Windows, in that case Windows Vista, had the drivers included for my printer and external hard drives. When later upgrading to Windows 7 and then 8, I was able to use the same driver for my scanner and everything else simply worked.
Sounds like my HP printer-scanner-copier. When I go to use it….”driver is missing”. I download the driver from HP, and it works…..for a while. Then when use it again….”driver is missing”.
The problem is related to their HP Imaging Monitor, which I need for the scanner to operate.
I’ve found a permanent fix….pull the plugs and put it in the closet.
I have a Toshiba Staellite L655-S5101 laptop with a built-in webcam. The webcam recently stopped working so I went out to the Toshiba website and downloaded the current driver. During the installtion process, an error message came up: “The following applications should be closed before continuing the installation: TOSHIBA Web Camera.” Of course, the webcam was not running, but I checked system processes and shut off Skype and tried again. Same thing. Next I ran a through scan using Malwarebytes and then AVG. Each one found one item which was taken care of, so I rebooted and tried again. Same thing. Next I used Revo Uninstaller to uninstall the webcam as thought maybe that was interferring with the installation, and attempted to install the driver once again. I am still getting the same message. Why would it be telling me this when there is no way the webcam could be running? Any idea how to fix? I really like having a built-in webcam and do not want to go to an external unit. Thanks.
Canon PowerShot SX160 IS driver problem under investiagion. http://www.prosefights.org/xmas2012/ronaldcanon.htm