Camera Shows Black Screen But Light Is On
If your webcam's "On" light is glowing but the screen is pure black, your hardware is working but the "UVC" (USB Video Class) driver is failing to send frames to the OS. Againly fixes this automatically by flushing the video buffer and restarting the Frame Server service.
Why this happens
- Service Timeout: The "Windows Camera Frame Server" service has frozen.
- App Conflict: Another app is receiving the video frames, but not displaying them (Ghosting).
- GPU Driver Mismatch: Your graphics card is failing to decode the H.264/MJPEG stream from the camera.
Fix it manually
- Restart Camera Service: Search for "Services" > find "Windows Camera Frame Server" > Right click > Restart.
- Privacy Shutter: Check if your laptop has a physical sliding shutter (Yes, it happens to the best of us).
- Disable GPU Acceleration: If using Zoom or Teams, go to Video Settings and disable "Hardware Acceleration."
Fix it automatically with Againly
Againly detects when a video stream is "Dropping Frames" and automatically restarts the background Windows services to restore the link.