Dell Inspiron 1545 webcam fixed!!!

Hello Everyone, 

After a year of looking to find the right driver for the webcam which for no apparent reason stopped. I finally found a way to fix mine, so I hope  this helps you fix yours. Dell support has NO CLUE!!! 

Step 1) Go to start, then control panel, then device manager. Click the plus in front of imaging and uninstall any unknown devices. (Right click on the device and click uninstall).

Step 2) Power off the laptop and take the black tabs over the four screws at the top of the laptop screen off. 

Step 3) Unscrew the four screws at the top. PLEASE Note: one of the screws should be captive and may not come completely out. On my laptop it was the one on the left next to the webcam. There is a strong magnet in the area, probably a part of the webcam.

Step 4) With a very thin and small flat head screwdriver, you should be able to pry the black plastic apart and expose the webcam. You do not have to take the whole housing off. You just want to reach the connecting wire so you can unplug it temporarily. You can google how to do this.

Step 5) Reboot the laptop. Then reinstall Dell webcam central. This is key. I used a windows vista version of webcam central from 2008. If you don't have it available (from another old dell computer I had) reinstall the webcam central that came with your computer. I got errors while installing, but all I wanted was the correct driver to install since I could not find it on the web. I also did not load the avatar option.

Step 6) I rebooted the computer and then plugged the webcam back in from where I had unplugged it. Windows detected it and and it installed properly. 

Step 7) Power down. Put the screws back in and the black tabs back on top. ENJOY!!!

Hope this helps someone else. 

GOD Bless,

TA