AR21-M Camera Working under Vista.......at last!!!!!!!!!

[W33ALH]

Well folks.........I finally found a driver that lets me use the camera under windows vista

I hope it solves other peoples problems, please let me know as it has taken me hours and hours of testing to find one that works

The driver is on the japanese sony site - use this link to have it translated by google for you

website

and here is the direct link for the driver (right click, save as - its an ftp site)

to install, i made sure i had the latest version of the camera utility from the uk sony site, extracted the files in this exe to a folder on my desktop, then installed manually thru device manager

hopefully this will work for some more of our GREAT vaio community

[neos11]

Unfortunately it's not working on my AR21M.

The .exe fle is not even extractable..

I also lost the cam in Skype, which was working nicely before..

[clivus]

Likewise, I've now got a webcam, followed your instructions and now it works. But, cannot get it to work with Microsoft Messenger, perhaps if I reinstall Messenger I might solve that problem. But thanks for the info and the solution.

[skywalker2508]

Hallo,
I have also a brandnew vaio-ar-21s and I have been struggling with my camera driver for almost a week now, and finally I tried your instructions, downloaded it from the japenese site and it works fine now om mylaptop. I got it working with skype now. thanks very much for this most valuable input. I would say that you come as an angel from heaven, I almost reached the point to return this Sony-Vaio-AR21S to the shop and buy a another brand, for which I do not need to install the vista drivers , driver by driver, really crazy. Sony does not support 1 service pack with all necessary drivers for this laptop. I bought it for Euro 2100 , but even the Acer of my 7 year old son of only Euro 800,- worked fine from the begining. Ounce agin, thanks for your help, | am finally able to communicate with my mother in Spain from the Netherlands and she will be able to see me now via my built in camera, I can finally get rid of the external usb webcam, which I used intermediately (a little bit strange for a high class laptop , that is very expensive. I got it working finally, but thanks to whiskits on this forum, not because of the (lack of) Sony service.
See the tremendous error list on drivers on this forum, that is absolutely unbelieveable.
Probably I still have problems, because I did not try all features of my laptop yet.

Skywalker

[neos11]

Is the camera capture utility working?

Do you see the camera listed under Scannners and Cameras in Control Panel?

Does Windows Movie Maker recognizes the camera?

If all these apply, i must be doing something very wrong here...

Please, someone post a guide..

Thanks

[W33ALH]

The .exe fle is not even extractable..

try downloading winrar (www.rarsoft.com) and use that to extract the file, it worked for me

But, cannot get it to work with Microsoft Messenger

It didn't work for me until i ran the the audio/video tuning wizard again as it was using the tv tuner as the default device

Is the camera capture utility working?

Yes it is working fine, try downloading / reinstalling the latest version

Do you see the camera listed under Scannners and Cameras in Control Panel?

Does Windows Movie Maker recognizes the camera?

no, it doesn't appear in either of these - I hadn't checked before as I needed the cam for skype etc................i'll do some more digging around to try and find a solution

[Jshrk]

Awesome now works thanks mate, only thing now is to get it to show in the 'Scanners and Cameras' however this prob wont be fixed until a new driver is released.

[neos11]

ΟΚ, I've reached a state where the cam is working under Skype, but that's it really..

The Camera capture utility installation does not display an "installation complete" message (there is hard disk activity though), and after that there is nowhere to be found..

Probably a conflict with the rest of my setup..

I guess we need a proper driver by Sony ASAP, thanks for the help though..

[Jshrk]

The Camera capture utility installation does not display an "installation complete" message (there is hard disk activity though), and after that there is nowhere to be found..

I had the same problem with the utility but this can be easily fixed by extracting the camera setup with winrar to a folder, then running the install from there.

[neos11]

Yes!!!!

Camera captre utility is working now!!!

The secret is that both the driver file and the camera capture utility need to be extracted manualy!!!

Thanks Jshrk.

Someone make it a sticky, camera issue is now solved with AR21M!!