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Recently I changed a friend's OS from a really virus filled windows 7 to Ubuntu ..but kept changing os's because lsusb wouldn't detect the camera.But after coming back to windows, the camera wasn't detected, though I must point out the device driver for the camera was never found.
The Sony 'technician' told me that that since the dev-manager of windows 7 couldn't detect the camera , regardless of whether the device driver was installed, the software change must have damaged the hardware.
I was wondering if there is any truth to it.
metric-space
Posted 2013-11-09T05:09:40.490
Reputation: 115
possible duplicate of Can some software physically damage hardware?, Can software break hardware?
– Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2013-11-09T05:16:56.233@techie007 cool post but doesn't talk abotu streaming devices just stporage devices and the cpu in general ..though I could have overlooked something and some implication. – metric-space – 2013-11-09T05:28:25.917
In theory it's possible (if, say, the camera had some kind of writable firmware, for example, although that doesn't really qualify as hardware damage), but it's really, really, really unlikely. The hardware would have to be extremely poorly designed and such a thing would be newsworthy, and I've never heard of it happening with a webcam before. (Also, any firmware corruption is rather more likely to be caused by the infected Windows installation than Ubuntu.) – user55325 – 2013-11-09T06:16:36.737
@user55325 well I would love any reason to blame windows..but apparently the webcam was working before the installation but here's the catch...apparently there was this virus that managed to take a picture of the owner while the owner was surfing through the web.ANy thoughts? and I have to admit, this was one laptop that gave me problems. – metric-space – 2013-11-09T08:13:15.550
Well, there's really no chance that just installing Ubuntu could damage a webcam. Did you happen to install a clean copy of Windows or use a recovery disk? I'm guessing it uses some kind of weird proprietary driver or something, which doesn't exist in the new install. – user55325 – 2013-11-09T08:36:15.807
@user55325 after multiple linux flavours, I did install a fresh copy , but had to download every damn driver ..like every damn driver (the wifi one off the internet via my linux laptop) but they didnt have the original web cam driver ...called their service center and their 'diagnosis' is what led me to ask the question on here..even the service center folks did not have the driver on them and could not get any info on the chipset, .Via linux, no driver would work because there was no device detected. – metric-space – 2013-11-09T10:19:32.903
It could be something as simple as a loose wire, I know it sucks but you may need to open up the laptop and trace the wiring for the webcam to see if its plug has come loose. Hopefully you should be able to get a repair guide from Sony or on the internet. – Mokubai – 2013-11-10T10:02:48.867