Is there such thing as a universal webcam driver?

RockinX

My brother got me a webcam early in the year, and I installed the drivers and useless programs that came with it. A while later, Avast detected a virus in one of the programs, and I promptly deleted it, and uninstalled anything that wasn't a driver.

Now that I have formatted my computer, I'm afraid of installing the webcam's drivers out of fear that they will have viruses. Is there such thing as a universal driver for webcams? The webcam my brother gave me is branded "Markvision", BTW.

Dedian

Is there a model number on there somewhere? In the linux world, there's usually somewhat generic drivers, based on camera chipset. I'm pretty sure on the Windows side of things, you have to go with the driver for your particular model... If there's a generic driver for the chipset that Windows can use (that maybe we can look up given the model #), that might work (though I haven't heard of those...)

General_Win

Well you could always just get the drivers from the manufacturer.

Say it was an HP Boner Time webcam. You could just google: HP Boner Time webcam driver.

Open the links that are from HP's site.

There are also such things as false positives in virus scanners.

Reformatting your computer was probably a huge waste of time since your Avast! caught the false positive.

EliteLamer

Vista might automagically find the drivers when you plug it in.

xzzy

There is a standard for webcams, it's known as UVC, which is short for 'usb video class'. There are lists of UVC webcams out there, but the huge majority of them these days are compatible.

Any recent OS should not need a driver to use these.. Vista, W7, modern Linux, they all should just work.

RockinX

I just tried connecting it to the computer and Windows 7 did not find drivers for it.

My problem with downloading the drivers from the manufacturer's website is that I don't trust them too much D= What if it wasn't a false positive?

xzzy

Getting drivers from the company that makes the hardware is probably fine. Odds are high it was a false positive.

If you're really that paranoid, contact their support.

General_Win

RockinX wrote: »

I just tried connecting it to the computer and Windows 7 did not find drivers for it.

My problem with downloading the drivers from the manufacturer's website is that I don't trust them too much D= What if it wasn't a false positive?

If a company went through the whole process of designing, manufacturing, distributing and selling a webcam for the sole purpose of spreading malware, well sir I think its your duty to install it.

Klorgnum

RockinX wrote: »

I just tried connecting it to the computer and Windows 7 did not find drivers for it.

My problem with downloading the drivers from the manufacturer's website is that I don't trust them too much D= What if it wasn't a false positive?

What if it wasn't? Avast caught it the first time, it'll catch it again and you'll know for sure there's something up with the company. Did you even read what kind of virus Avast said it was? Did it give the virus a specific name, or was it just warning you that it matched a heuristic? Was it a keylogger or a trojan or just something that popped up annoying ads?

Reformatting your computer because your antivirus software found and -handled- something is not a good way to maintain your system.

RockinX

Klorgnum wrote: »

RockinX wrote: »

I just tried connecting it to the computer and Windows 7 did not find drivers for it.

My problem with downloading the drivers from the manufacturer's website is that I don't trust them too much D= What if it wasn't a false positive?

What if it wasn't? Avast caught it the first time, it'll catch it again and you'll know for sure there's something up with the company. Did you even read what kind of virus Avast said it was? Did it give the virus a specific name, or was it just warning you that it matched a heuristic? Was it a keylogger or a trojan or just something that popped up annoying ads?

Reformatting your computer because your antivirus software found and -handled- something is not a good way to maintain your system.

No, actually, I didn't format because of that. I formatted because I installed Windows 7, haha.

What's weird is that I inserted the CD yesterday so I could install the driver from Device Manager, and it didn't find any drivers in there :S

Klorgnum

RockinX wrote: »

Klorgnum wrote: »

RockinX wrote: »

I just tried connecting it to the computer and Windows 7 did not find drivers for it.

My problem with downloading the drivers from the manufacturer's website is that I don't trust them too much D= What if it wasn't a false positive?

What if it wasn't? Avast caught it the first time, it'll catch it again and you'll know for sure there's something up with the company. Did you even read what kind of virus Avast said it was? Did it give the virus a specific name, or was it just warning you that it matched a heuristic? Was it a keylogger or a trojan or just something that popped up annoying ads?

Reformatting your computer because your antivirus software found and -handled- something is not a good way to maintain your system.

No, actually, I didn't format because of that. I formatted because I installed Windows 7, haha.

Whoops, sorry.

Phyphor

General_Win wrote: »

RockinX wrote: »

I just tried connecting it to the computer and Windows 7 did not find drivers for it.

My problem with downloading the drivers from the manufacturer's website is that I don't trust them too much D= What if it wasn't a false positive?

If a company went through the whole process of designing, manufacturing, distributing and selling a webcam for the sole purpose of spreading malware, well sir I think its your duty to install it.

Yeah, especially since they would have easier ways of doing that if that was their goal.

Did you know that most Windows installs will autorun USB mass storage devices that say they're cd-roms?


To the OP:

There is a universal webcam driver, but only if the webcam conforms to the USB video specification. Otherwise it vendor-specific.

shadydentist

General_Win wrote: »

RockinX wrote: »

I just tried connecting it to the computer and Windows 7 did not find drivers for it.

My problem with downloading the drivers from the manufacturer's website is that I don't trust them too much D= What if it wasn't a false positive?

If a company went through the whole process of designing, manufacturing, distributing and selling a webcam for the sole purpose of spreading malware, well sir I think its your duty to install it.

There are instances of malware finding its way into software during manufacturing. I've heard of USB drives accidently shipping with malware that targeted computers set to auto-run programs on external drives.