The Windows 10 Anniversary Update has reportedly broken millions of webcams. If your webcam has been affected, there’s a workaround to get it back if you don’t mind tweaking your registry a bit.
The problem stems from a change in the way Windows 10 handles decoding certain webcam video streams. Both USB and network-connected webcams an be affected, freezing the camera when you try to use it and making it impossible to access.
If your camera has been affected, you can follow these steps from Thurrott.com contributor Rafael Rivera to get it working again:
- Open regedit from the Start menu.
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Navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows Media FoundationPlatform - Right click the Platform folder and select New > DWORD. Name it “EnableFrameServerMode”
- Right-click the new value and select “Modify”
- Enter “0” in the “Value data” field.
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Navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREWOW6432NodeMicrosoftWindows Media FoundationPlatform - Repeat steps 3-5.
For now, this seems to be the only fix that allows you to stay on the Anniversary Update. If you haven’t updated yet and you’d like to avoid screwing up your webcam, you can try holding off on the updates. Though given Microsoft’s propensity for pushing updates, that may be tough to pull off.
Comments
3 responses to “Windows 10 Anniversary Update Broke Countless Webcams, Here’s How To Fix It”
What are the chances this came about because they wanted to control where what when and how we use the camera, with respect to their access and our security?
I still haven’t been prompted to update my win10 to AU. Perhaps its because i used a local policy to disable updates automatically installing and rebooting, but even checking manually gets me other updates but not AU.
I think ill count myself lucky and just wait a few more months before trying to update, let the bugs get ironed out.
Windows 10 anniversay killed my logitech webcam. 🙁 I tried this solution and it worked. However, the webcam stopped working again after about weeks later. I was not sure if the problem was caused by the driver. Well, I sued OSToto Driver Talent to repair the driver and I fixed this issue accidently?! Then, I Googled and it was proved the incompatible webcam driver could lead to conflict and freeze webcams.