Now that a friend & I have both uploaded our MSN Messenger we want to have a webcam conversation, this afternoon she plugged her camera in and I could see her & the dogs, plugged mine in (One of these 3-in-1 types - L'esprit) but although it sends out an invite to her and she accepts to start a conversation with me, my camera won't start. Can anyone help?

if you both have msn 6.0 and windows xp then u both need 2 either both click start webcam or woteva or u can goto "tools, start video conference".

Would there be a problem as I have XP, my friend has Windows 98?

Don't think that should make a difference!

Well I could not get mine to work at all and I sem to have mislaid the instructions, at the bottom of the messenger box it said it was trying to connect to my friends computer and then it would fail, can understand why? Maybe it has something to do with the reason I can send files of photos to anyone when I use MSN Messenger although friends can send them to me. Anyone help with this?

Computers, sometimes I hate 'em!

i always go on msn messenger with my friends and have cams on, they all work ok apart from 1 friend who's cam doesn't work, have u got it set up properly? what make is ur cam?

My daughter and I are networked, in the same house.........lol. when she was on windows 98 and mine xp, we couldn't use the webcams, but now we are both on xp they work great, so I think it is a problem with two different operating systems.

But don't both operating systems have the facility to use webcams. Maybe it is the webcam that is not compatible with the operating system

We were using msn messenger, there are different versions of messenger for different operating systems

Ah i see, sorry if i'm being dumb here but don't you get the software to run with the webcam. I have a webcam but have never used. Would probably have to ask bf if i decided too.

hi lily have you solved your prob yet, the most likely cause are the drivers for your webcam which is the software you get with a webcam. Can you record pictures with your supplied sofware to your own computer at this point msn is not needed. The software you got with webcam should provide some sort of recording programme, if you don't have any recording software you can download an appropriate programme such as gotcha (compatible with all ms webcams) and test that you can record to harddrive, you can down load this from download.com. Once you can record you know software is working and you should be able to use webcam! Hope this helps! If you can't record you know you need to update your drivers.

Ok, that went straight over my head!!!!!

The webcam I have is one of those 3-in1 cameras which was supplied with the PC, it's not brilliant, the photos you can take with it are very poor unless in tiny thumbnails, so thats why I wanted webcam use.. The camera is a l'espirit (digitaldream), I've mislaid my instructions at the moment but I seem to remember they weren't very helpful too.

My friend who is using Windows 98 has upgraded her Messenger to the new one that I had already done (The one with more emoticons, play games etc.), I'm using Windows XP, my PC was only bought last year.

Can you explain in thicko's terms what to do please, you can email me if you want to cause less embarassment to my street cred!!!! ;)

Have sent email,so your street cred is saved!!!