Few months back I was having problems using the Show My Webcam option from Windows Live Messenger 2009 on my laptop running Windows Vista. After spending a lot of time testing, I found a temporary workaround to enable the grayed out or broken camera icon by just signing out and then signing in back. This workaround is not really a real solution because I had to do that all the time whenever I wanted to use the Show My Webcam option. It is a bug on Windows Live Messenger 2009 and surprisingly there isn’t any updates to fix the problem even after months has passed since messenger 2009 was released.

Show My webcam disabled

Today I was checking out Jonathan Kay’s blog and he too written a similar article but with another solution. I gave it a try and the solution permanently enabled Windows Live Messenger 2009 Show My Webcam option! By saying permanently meaning that after restarting my computer, the Show My Webcam option is no longer grayed out and I no longer need to repeat the workaround whenever I wanted to enable show my webcam.

The solution that was posted in Jonathan’s website is to disable the webcam from “Audio and video setup” and then re-enabling it back. To do that, press Alt + T to bring up the Tools menu bar, then select Audio and video setup…. Click the Next button when you’re at the audio setup to go to the webcam setup. Click on the drop down menu from the webcam selection and select Disable. Click Finish.
Messenger 2009 camera disabled
Now do the exact same thing as above but this time instead of selecting disable, select your default webcam that you want to use. Now try signing on to your Messenger and check if the Show My Webcam feature is available to use or not (by right it should). Also do try restarting your computer to check if your Messenger 2009 show my webcam is enabled or not without going through the workaround steps above.

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