This guide is created to help you fix your camera in Surface Book and Surface Book Pro. The camera most commonly breaks after applying various system updates.
You are probably a proud owner of a brand new Surface Book or perhaps a Surface Pro device and now you are excited to test all of its amazing functionalities. Whether you plan to use it for fun at home or you rely on it to be your right hand in the office, one such machine can really provide you with great features and unlimited possibilities for work, communications, creativity and much more. One of its greatest and very handy tools is its front-facing camera, which can be used for various purposes. It recognizes your face and iris, this way allowing you to sign in to Windows 10 without the need to touch the screen or the keyboard and also gives you the functionality of video chat via Skype or other quick messaging apps.
Working with the Surface devises has never been so easy and beautiful, however, some users are reporting problems with their camera, which is not working. The reasons for that could be various, but sometimes this may be just a driver problem that could easily be fixed with a little bit of juggling in the panel. In the guide below we will give you a few easy solutions that may help you have your camera not working issue solved.
Surface Book (Pro) Camera Not Working Fix
The Guide
- First, open the Windows Device manager by right clicking the Start button and navigating to the Device manager button.
- Next, scroll down to the following path: Imaging Devices > Microsoft LifeCam Front/Rear. Select the camera that is not working – you will be given the options to select the one, the other or both of them.
- Then, you should choose the option that states “Update driver”. This option will search your device and the web for pending driver updates and it will install them.
- In case that no driver update has been detected as pending, right click on the driver again and select “Uninstall device”. It is important to make sure that the box that states “delete this driver from device” is NOT checked!
- At the end, restart your device. This fix should enable the Surface device to reinstall the drivers properly by itself and solve the camera issues by restoring its function.
In case that this fix does not solve the problem, try troubleshooting the camera issue in the Microsoft community or the Windows forums, where a solution may be available. Before the production release, the Windows insiders have repeatedly reported some problems with their camera, even on older machines, mostly related to software updates. The Surface Book itself has been reported to have some camera issues after a cumulative update. So, if your camera is not working, it could still be a software bug.
However, if you can’t find the reason for your camera not working and you are sure that it is not related to some software problems, then it may be some hardware failure. Surface Pro and Surface Book are relatively new devices and, even though it would be very odd for these high-end PC’s to have a hardware failure, it is not excluded that such issue may appear. If this is the reason, it would be best to contact the Microsoft Store and ask for assistance.
Do you have any other Surface tips, which you would be interested in? Let us know in the comment below.