Surface Pro 7 camera freezes in zoom but white light stays on

I have had all the same issues as listed here, and in the previous ticket.

It got to the point where microsoft replaced my surface 8, however the problem is still happening.

I used the zoom application for a meeting, after a while (40 mins or so), my camera on the call froze, then caused the zoom meeting to crash. After that the white camera light was on, however I could not use the camera for facial recognition to login, or on zoom.

Rebooting did not help. I deleted the zoom application and rebooted, and still no improvement. I then uninstalled the camera, as that worked every time with the previous device, and this did fix the issue. I then used zoom on the web rather than the app, and I did not have the problem with the camera.

I had previously done this multiple times, cleaned the zoom application etc, until they resorted to replacing the device.

The issue is clearly related to the device running the zoom application, however no one seems to be able to advise on how to permanently fix this solution.

Any actual solutions would be extremely appreciated.

Hi all,

After 2 years of suffering and struggling with this problem, I've found the following scenario and workaround:

1.- The webcam of my surface pro 7+ works fine if I run it on Win 10 - driver 60.19041.2.2768 from 22/08/2020

(the original driver installed with the surface's original image).

2.- If I update the surface to the latest Win

10 version (Win 10 Pro 22H2 19045.4170), the Intel AVL Camera, Control Logic (3 items), Front camera, Rear camera,

and IR camera drivers, are automatically updated to 60.22000.5.12796 from 14/6/2023. This is the first problem: At

that point, the camera starts misbehaving and freezing in video calls (Zoom, MS Teams, Google Meet, etc).

3.- If I rollback only these drivers (not the complete Win 10 update):- Intel AVL Camera Driver- Intel Control Logic

(3 items in the device manager)- Front camera- Rear camera- IR camerato the original Win 10 driver 60.19041.2.2768

from 22/08/2020, the surface starts working perfectly again. Remember, still on Win 10 Pro 22H2 19045.4170 (latest update).

4.- Now, if I update the surface running Win 10 with driver 60.19041.2.2768 from 22/08/2020 to Win 11, all those drivers

are automatically updated to 60.22000.5.12796 from 14/06/2023. After that, the camera freezes in video calls again.

5.- If I keep Win 11, and rollback the camera driver to the Win 10 - 60.19041.2.2768 again (original driver from the image),

the surface no longer freezes, but it restarts abruptly during video calls making a terrible noise, and showing a blue error

screen (BSOD).

My conclusion: by now, Surface Pro 7+ IS NOT compatible with Win 11 and, to make it work fine in Windows 10, those drivers

must be rolled back to Win 10 driver 60.19041.2.2768 from 22/08/2020, independently if the Win 10 is updated to its latest

version.

Microsoft have confirmed there is an issue yet there is no solution. Our organisation uses some 150+ Surface Pro 7 and 7+ and this is a major issue for us. Any app that uses the camera faces the same issue. Microsoft Teams and Zoom are both problematic. Reply from Microsoft tier 3 support as follows. Basically, don't expect anything soon, this has been an ongoing issue since their release.

Current status:

Some Surface Pro users face issues with the internal camera becoming non-functional until the device is restarted. This happens when the camera driver becomes unresponsive and affects Teams calls when video is used. The incident is currently being worked on by our engineering team. Our initial investigation suggests that this camera driver is sensitive to memory utilization and crashes silently when workload is increased.

As this is work in progress, we can't yet provide an estimation of when a fix will be available. This is a highly complex engineering problem, and multiple teams are collaborating to find the solution. We will keep you up to date on the progress we are making. We appreciate your patience.
 
As the issue occurs when the device is running low on memory, we recommend:

• Close any applications or browser tabs that you are not using, you can check the memory status in the Task manager>performance tab> Memory.
• Use the new Teams app, which improves performance and uses less memory than the legacy Teams application.
• Turn off the camera during Teams calls in case your device is struggling with memory. This will reduce the load on your device and prevent camera problems.

In case your camera stops working, you can do any of the following solutions

• One temporary solution is to disable and then re-enable the AVStream camera from the device manager. This will restore the camera driver.
• Another option is to reboot your device. This will also reset the camera driver.

I did not find a solution, but workaround. I bought an external web cam. For over a month, I've been using that external web cam, and it did not freeze not even a single time.

Today, I reverted to using the built-in camera. I thought maybe I got an update which fixed the bug? Guess what, on my 3rd Zoom meeting, the camera froze again. During that meeting, I managed to switch to the external web cam (without leaving the meeting). It took a while (feels like the app is half frozen or waiting for some timeout), but after about 1 minute, the external web cam went on and worked.

Given that, I'm confident that my problem is related to the hardware or the software driver of the built-in camera.

It's annoying that I now have to carry around an external web cam despite the fact that I have a built-in camera.

I hope that this workaround will be helpful to those who have the luxury of being able to use an external web cam with their Microsoft Surface.

It is sad that Microsoft managed to create a newer device which is worst in some aspects compared to the previous versions. I had a Surface Pro 3 for years and was very happy. Moved to Surface Pro 8 and now I'm without a built-in camera and the super expensive pens do not work anywhere as reliably as the inexpensive ones of the Surface Pro 3.

I am facing the same issue but unfortunately my warranty expired - my question to you does your Surface pro overheat as well ? i want to see if there is any correlation -