If you’re here, you’re probably having the same problem hundreds if not thousands of Acer Orbicam users have had. You have two choices:

1. read the following article and ALL replies and see if one of the solutions fits your needs.
2. Delete all Acer Orbicam software (let Windows take care of the Driver – it’s OK) and download DEBUT software. It’s free, doesn’t crash and does many many more things that Acer Orbicam just doesn’t do.

UPDATE: I will shortly be closing the comments to this thread as 190 answers is more than enough and it’s hard for anyone to find what they’re looking for, even if it is written in the first twenty lines of this post. There is a 99% probability that you will find the answer to your OrbiCam problem in this post. Read through it carefully and follow all the instructions BEFORE downloading anything unnecessary. Try the “My Pictures” trick first and then if that doesn’t work, try the Device Manager procedure. If after that you’re still not getting anywhere, the only solution is to get in touch with Acer. If you have the details I show you how to get from Device Manager, Acer support staff can also e-mail you the correct drivers.

In a previous post I proudly declared to the world that Acer had released a fix for the OrbiCam issue that arises when users upgrade to Vista or with early pre-installed versions of the same software.

Since then hundreds of users have passed through this blog and have clicked on the “fix link”, only to be disappointed with the result. Many posted their frustrations here and I apologize to all of you who were misled.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon with some amazingly-friendly Acer support staff who took me through the problem and explained the possible solutions.

The symptoms
The symptoms arise when a user double clicks on Acer Orbicam (Desktop icon), and Vista displays the following message: “Acer Orbicam application has stopped working” and needs to be shut down.

First of all, your webcam is still working, the device does not have problems. You can check this quite easily by opening Messenger -> Tools -> Webcam Settings.

Another way is to check the folder:
C:\windows\BisonCam\

There you will find the application “LiveCam.exe”. Run this to check that the webcam device is working fine.

If you don’t have the “BisonCam” folder, this means that your webcam is a different model; I don’t yet have a complete list of all the devices and their relative folders but all notebooks and webcams have some folder so if you look hard enough you’ll find yours.

The problem
There appear to be two factors that can create this problem:

1] The Orbicam application needs the correct orbicam driver to work correctly;
Windows Vista has its own internal driver to install the device, naming it “Acer Orbicam” (great Windows!!) but in this way the application cannot find the correct driver, so Vista returns the error message.

2] If some pictures are present inside “My Pictures” folders, the Orbicam application will fail to start. It seems to be a Vista issue and still needs to be fully clarified.

The problem seems to have been caused by the Vista Upgrade software, which causes the OrbiCam application on certain models to malfunction. However, as explained above, the OrbiCam camera works fine, the software just can’t control it correctly after the upgrade.

Another issue that has added to the confusion here is that there are “more than ten” different types of OrbiCams installed on Acer notebooks. Again as mentioned above Windows Vista has its own internal driver to install the device, and simply calls it “Acer Orbicam” which makes distinguishing the correct driver from wrong one an almost impossible task. If you replace your driver with the wrong one, the application cannot find the correct driver and you get the now famous error message.

Lastly, the problem is restricted to Vista-ready notebooks and NOT native Vista notebooks. By that I mean the problem does not exist with the new Gemstone and TravelMate ProFile models as these were designed specifically to run under Vista.

I know this is no consolation to users with this problem but I just wanted to reassure readers that this issue is not endemic to all Acer notebooks.

Solutions
Currently only 2 notebooks have complete solutions available online. This is because – so far – they are the only “problems” Acer support technicians in Taiwan have been able to fully replicate, analyse and repair.

These “fixes” are not general solutions and ARE NOT OK FOR ALL NOTEBOOKS. This explains why some readers have been getting error messages with the new drivers/applications. The new drivers and applications can be found at the following addresses:

Aspire 9300 at the following link:
http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/notebook/as_9300.html

Aspire 5570 at the following link:
http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/notebook/as_5570.html

If your notebook is not one of the two above, read on:

For all notebooks with Acer Orbicam the repair procedure is the same:

1] identify the specific webcam device you have inside your notebook
2] get the hardware description (hardware id) of your notebook’s webcam
3] get the full serial number of your notebook (long alphanumeric code in the bottom side)
4] send this information to your local support centre who can then walk you through the procedure for your specific notebook.

All steps are important because only with the above information can Acer correctly identify the right driver and application for your notebook. Simply sending “Acer Orbicam” as the description, does not help because all the different webcams Acer installed are called “Acer Orbicam” (again, thanks Windows)…

So how do you identify the right one ?

How to get the webcam device information:
Go to “Control Panel”, switch to “Classic View” (the support team still find this way easier and better to work with than the default one) and double click on the “System” icon; to the right you will find Tasks list and below “Device Manager”, click on this.

Now you have the full list of devices of your notebook, look for “Imaging Devices” and double click on this. Here you will find the Acer Orbicam.

Device Manager

Double click on “Acer Orbicam” and the Acer Orbicam Properties window appears. There are three tabs : General, Driver, Details

Orbicam Properties

Click on “Driver” tab, the important information listed here is:
“Driver Provider” and “Driver Version”

Orbicam Properties 2

Copy this info onto a word / txt file or take a screenshot of this window. Just make sure you write down this information. Then click on “Details” tab

Orbicam Properties 3

Under “Property” you have a scrolling list, click on it and open the drop down menu.

Orbicam Properties 4

On the drop down menu look for “Hardware Ids”. Click on this.

In the Value box, you should find something similar to:
USB\VID_5986&PID_0102&REV_0100&MI_00
USB\VID_5986&PID_0102&MI_00

Orbicam Properties 5

As before, copy these two lines or make a “screenshot” of the window

At the end of all this you will have:

Your Notebook’s Serial Number
The OrbiCam Driver Provider
The OrbiCam Driver Version
The OrbiCam Hardware IDs

Send all of this information to Acer with your support request/telephone call. This should cut down the time it takes them to get you back up and running.