Built in camera "being used" by other program

Hello guys. I have a laptop Acer Aspire 9410 with a buit-in logitech web camera (Acer Orbi Cam).Without any aparent reason I cant use it neither with its own software nor with any messenger service. When I open it on kits own, i get a message "camera is in use by another application ", although nothing else is open at all. I aleady reinstall drivers, the software, removed the messenger, but nothing change . Can anybody give me some light about how to deal with this? Thank you in advance!!!
Samuel.

 

I don't know whats going on, but I have also noticed this with my Vaio AR series laptop. I go to pull up the "Vaio Camera Capture Utility" and instead of the view of the camera in the window I get a blue screen and that same message. Nothing else running ... even right after start up.

 

OS reinstall worked for me - though it wasn't the main reason I had to reinstall (Win XP Pro SP2). I had to reinstall because of an unfixable Windows Management Instrumentation failure - which also meant I had to disable Shell Hardware Detection to get anything to work at all... Go figure.... (My camera problem by the way, was with a Creative, Live camera). Check to see if you can access System Information (ie Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Information). If it hangs, fails and mentions Windows Management Instrumentation - there are various fixes for this, ranging from simple, to complex, to complete reinstall of OS. Since I've been through all of those - happy to assist if I'm right about the root cause. You might also see if disabling Shell Hardware Detection helps (this is not really an essential service, most of the time).