Automatic Safe Shutter is not working anymore

Question

Good evening,

I have acquired a Latitude 9430 2 in 1 about 2 months ago, it works great and is overall an awesome laptop.

However, since I believe yesterday, the automatic safe shutter feature doesn't work anymore, unless I explicitely press on F9, the camera is never covered by the red shutter.

I like messing around with my settings etc., but I don't remember touching anything related to that, and I couldn't fix it, nor finding any relevent on the Internet.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the camera and its drivers from the device manager, I looked in the BIOS settings, but I found nothing.

Would anyone know how to fix this, as it's a pretty important privacy feature to me ?

Thanks in advance.

agentofvictory · Accepted Answer

Hi Tristan, I believe I was experiencing the same issue on my 9440 where the camera shutter would stay open unless explicitly closed manually using F9. I had changed a setting that I just remembered that might be helpful to you if this issue is still unresolved. If you have Dell Optimizer and have messed around in the settings there, you'll see under "Presence detection" there is an option to identify your and others' presence. Uncheck that option. That promptly put the Automatic Safe shutter back into action in closed position. I've attached a pic for you and anyone who has this issue to see.

Hope this helped!Uncheck the Allow your and others' identity detection

Tristan-C789 · Answer

First of all, thanks for the answer and for the greetings !

I did have a BIOS update recently, I believe not more than a few days ago, but I had an error each time I tried installing it. I will try that now again.

Moreover, I don't know at all if that is linked to it or not, but it seems to me that my laptop's battery life has decreased quite significantly recently. The fans are getting quite excited more often ; I used to barely even notice them, now I feel like they're on 50% of the time.

After some searches, it appears I have BIOS version 1.8.0 dated to 16th of September. The update pending is the 1.9.1, and it failed again - I see no reason specified but I may not be looking at the right place.

I should add that a Dell technician came to my house to fix an hardware issue right before I got all these issues, but the only things he did were opening the chassis and reconnecting a cable to the 5G module.

Thank you again for the help

U2CAMEB4ME · Answer

Welcome to the Dell Community  @Tristan-C789  Have you recently upgraded your BIOS? And what BIOS version do you have now? Best regards, U2

U2CAMEB4ME · Answer

@Tristan-C789  I had seen this a few weeks ago??? https://www.dell.com/community/Latitude/Automatic-safeshutter-not-working-after-BIOS-update/m-p/8293419 Regards, U2

Tristan-C789 · Answer

Hey !

I tried again the 1.9.1 update but it didn't fix it sadly.

The post you linked seems to be exactly what I'm experiencing indeed, although it doesn't really help since there isn't a single answer to the above post

What should I do now ?

U2CAMEB4ME · Answer

@Tristan-C789

How are you trying to do the BIOS update?

Make sure this is up to date first.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=hkk5j&oscode=wt64a&productcode=latitude-14-9430-laptop

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=py1y5&oscode=wt64a&productcode=latitude-14-9430-laptop

Then try to install the BIOS update.

Regards,

U2

Tristan-C789 · Answer

Hey again !

I installed the two drivers you linked, I will update you when I'll be able to test if any thermal stuff changed. I realised that the laptop mostly overheats when watching a YouTube video or a Twitch stream - a Netflix show on the same browser doesn't have that effect however, pretty weird. I have tested on different browsers, I activated hardware acceleration on all of the browsers I've tested and nothing seems to fix it...

In the meantime, the BIOS update managed to get installed, but that didn't fix anything neither.

Honestly it seems like it's a setting that's missing because pressing F9 turns the lid on perfectly each times - but I couldn't find any kind of settings linked to the Automatic Shutter.

Regards

Tristan-C789 · Answer

Small update :

-> Heat and battery issues : uninstalling Dell "Optimizer" fixed it. That doesn't look like a particularly good optimiser.

-> Shutter issue : still not fixed, however F9 and F4 (respectively manuel camera and microphone shutters) work perfectly well, which makes me believe I touched some kind of settings that made the automatic shutter only be manual. If anybody knows where I could find such a setting, it would be more than welcome !

Tristan-C789 · Answer

Good evening, I was not expecting an answer, but wow thank you, your fix worked wonderfully well ! Once again, thanks so much

Latitude

Automatic Safe Shutter is not working anymore

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