webcam crashing computer and generally acting up

[jllz]

Mum bought a Logitech QuickCam webcam. There really isnt a lot of documentation with this thing.

It was installed over a week ago. When she's chatting the screen goes black and frequently she has to reboot the computer. She's using the most recent version of Yahoo Messenger. Scandisk is coming on telling her she's getting allocation errors. She's getting illegal operations windows.

Her computer has:
128mg ram
400 processor
20gb harddrive
win98se
usb 1.1

She's within the recommended specs. We would appreciate any assistance. Thanks

[photolady]

Usually the recommended specs are the least amount a product will run under. However, having more ram will help also. Black screen usually indicates heat and or video card problems. What video card does she have?

[Murf]

The computer must have DirectX 9.0 for it to properly work.

To check your version:

Go to the Windows START Menu, select RUN, type dxdiag and click OK.

Read the DirectX version information near the bottom of the DirectX Diagnostic Tool box.

To get the latest version:

HERE

[jllz]

Hi, Murf and Photolady
Thank you for the info. I checked and the computer does have DirectX 9.0. I looked at the info for the video card and what I found is:

Trident card
Chip Type TGUI 9680
built in
Mem 2mb.

Any thoughts on how this would affect the webcam performance? Can a built in video card be disabled and a new one installed with more ram memory?

[Train]

Originally posted by jllz

Any thoughts on how this would affect the webcam performance? Can a built in video card be disabled and a new one installed with more ram memory?

Yes it can be be disabled, normally either in Bios, inserting a PCI or AGP card, then on some there is a jumper on the motherboard to do it.

Yes, the more ram the video card has the more load it can take off the cpu.

• Her computer has:
  128mg ram
  400 processor
  20gb harddrive
  win98se
  usb 1.1

That tells me that there may not be a agp slot on the motherboard but they do make PCI cards that will do the trick if that is true.