HP laptop built-in webcam disappeared between Xubuntu 16.04 and 18.04

[MR ZenWiz]

On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 10:50 AM Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 3 Aug 2020 at 06:59, MR ZenWiz <mrzenwiz at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Semi-final results:
> >
> > The flash drive the utility created failed to boot - invalid system
> > disk (the flash drive).
>
> Did you *start* with a bootable flash drive?
>
No.  That part wasn't clear from the utility.  This is only my second
or third try to boot from a flash drive, and the first two were
miserable failures - both of them created using unetbootin.

However, see below.

> If you use Unetbootin under Linux, one of the built-in options is to
> create a bootable FreeDOS 1.0 drive for you. You can then test this,
> and if it works, copy the BIOS updater onto it.
>
The BIOS updater only works under Windows.  I tried the FreeDOS one
and it booted but would not run the utility.

> Not sure. Win10 is quite different and if asked to make a bootable
> drive I have no idea what it might copy.
>
Win 10 does not have this facility built-in anymore.  I had to use
Rufus, and that also did not work (FreeDOS won't run an NT exe).

> Does the stick boot any other computer? Does it boot a VM?
>
Didn't try.  No need.

> Did you use Virtualbox? How did you attach the USB key to the VM?
>
I plugged it in and in the VM Device tab I attached the flash drive.
That part worked fine.

> > Apparently if I want to update the BIOS, I'll have to install Win 10
> > on my one spare 2.5" hard drive.
>
:
> You don't just use a standard one? Gosh. I know it is not "best
> practice" but it makes life much easier. Since I almost never use
> Windows I don't consider it a big risk that all my installs have the
> same password for the only user account.
>
I didn't have a "standard" one.  I tried two older Windows laptop
disks, but I don't remember the passwords and I didn't care enough to
blank it and try again - those are old drives - Win 7 or XP or maybe
one of each.

I put in a drive I found that was blank and used woeusb to put the
disk image I used to upgrade my VM on it.  Surprisingly, it worked
even though it is larger than 4GB (!).  I installed Win 10 with that -
to my delighted surprise it actually booted and updated in less than 4
hours - more like one hour.

This ran the utility just fine.  However, there was no update - the
BIOS was already on the latest firmware available.

It seems that there actually is no webcam in the device - the BIOS
doesn't see it and neither Windows nor Linux can detect it (duh).

In another surprise, today I chatted with an HP support person, who
helped me out even though the warranty on the notebook expired in
2013.  He (or she - couldn't tell which) pointed me at the
configuration options in the BIOS and there's nothing there about a
webcam.  It seems that not all notebooks with that model number had a
webcam, and this one didn't.

At least I know now.  Darn it.  It's 10+ years old now anyway.  I may
need to look into getting a newer, faster one.  At some point.

> You could crack it with an NT password cracker. There are several.
> I've used Petter Nordahl-Hagens a few times:
>
> https://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/
>
> You can also do it from an Ubuntu live medium:
>
> https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/14369/change-or-reset-windows-password-from-a-ubuntu-live-cd/
>
I may do that at some point.  I'm much more likely to erase those old
Win disks and recycle them - they're old, slow and almost never used.

Thanks for the links.

Mark