Logitech Quickcam IM on Windows 7

At work I use a Logitech Quickcam IM (Model Number: V-UBB39) webcamera bought in 2006. After I installed Windows 7, I needed to reinstall the drivers for this webcam. I could not find the installation CD of this webcam. (Who keeps around installation discs in this age anyway?) Checking the Logitech website for drivers, I was surprised to see that this webcam is no longer supported! However, the Windows 7 Compatibility Center listed the Quickcam IM as compatible. Surely they must have used some driver to check the compatibility!

Google led me to some shady looking websites offering the old drivers (Quickcam 8.x) which supposedly are meant for this webcam. I tried to install them and they did not work. My suspicion is that they are meant for Windows XP and would not work on Windows 7 due to the large changes in the driver model starting from Vista. I needed a driver written for Vista or later for the Quickcam.

Giving up on finding the Windows 7 drivers for Quickcam IM, I decided to install the drivers of Logitech Quickcam Connect, since it looked the most similar to my webcam. Windows 7 warned me that there are problems with Windows 7 and Quickcam drivers! I continued, the installation went through but failed when I plugged in the webcam! The error dialog mentioned that one of the reasons for this could be due to installation by a non-Administrator. I had installed by elevating from a Standard User to Administrator. Ideally, this should work, but looks like the Quickcam developers have not put in enough effort to make this work. Sighing, I un-installed the drivers and installed again after explicitly logging into an Administrator account. The Quickcam IM webcam works now with Windows 7.

The webcam works, but the 3 years of experience with Logitech webcams has left a bad taste in my mouth. Quickcam drivers and software have always given me problems, both on Windows XP and now on Windows 7. Fixing these issues have always involved multiple trials, reboots and lots of wasted time. I really do not see why their webcams cannot function without their drivers as a generic USB webcam device to Windows, which many cheap webcams can!