There is a hardware information tool that should be able to detect what is visible to the kernel in a bit more meaningful way than dmesg but its name escapes me at the moment. Have a search for 'hardware' in Software Centre. s/ <blockquote type="cite">On 5 Nov 2010 20:59, "Barry Drake" <<a href="mailto:bdrake@crosswire.org">bdrake@crosswire.org</a>> wrote: Hi there .... Cheese is an app I never use except to give it a test. The other day I was showing my Dell Mini 10v to a friend, and Cheese said that it couldn't find the camera (built into the netbook). I re-installed Cheese, and also gstreamer. I then rebooted and still Cheese says 'no device found'. dmesg and lshw don't show anything that looks like a webcam (to me) but I'm not really sure what I should be seeing. The thing is, the netbook is still under warranty, and I want to find out as much as I can before I tell Dell there is a faulty camera. To send it back to Dell, I will have to back up my system and restore the version of the software that Dell supplied as it came with 8.04 and I'm running 10.04. Obviously if I do that and it doesn't work, the fault will be in the hardware, but if there's an easier way to test for a hardware fault I want to do that first!!! Regards, Barry Drake. -- Sent from my Dell Netbook using Ubuntu - the window-free environment that gives me real fresh air. -- <a href="mailto:ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com</a> <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk</a> <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/" target="_blank">https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/</a> </blockquote>