Microsoft releases a temporary fix for Surface Pro X camera bug

Microsoft has deployed a critical troubleshooter update for Surface Pro X devices that will give users access to their camera again. On May 23rd, plenty of Surface Pro X owners reported that their cameras had stopped working entirely. Based on stories posted on Reddit, Twitter and the company’s own support forums, reinstalling the camera’s driver didn’t work. Tweaking the device’s date and rolling it back to May 22nd did, but it came with its own set of potential issues, such as authentication and scheduling problems. 

In its new patch notes, the tech giant said the affected devices are powered by Qualcomm 8cx Gen 1, Qualcomm 8cx Gen 2, Microsoft SQ1 and Microsoft SQ2 processors. The troubleshooter update will be automatically applied to affected devices, and owners can check if it has been installed by going to their “hardware and devices troubleshooter” history and then looking for an entry that says “[a]utomatically change system settings to fix a problem on your device.”

As Ars Technica notes, users are reporting on the Microsoft support forum that the troubleshooter worked sufficiently, save for some posters saying that their cameras were working in slow motion outside of Teams or Zoom. Microsoft admitted in its announcement this workaround isn’t perfect — it is, after all, only meant to be a temporary fix. It might “disable some features of the camera or lower the image quality,” but it will make the camera functional until Microsoft comes up with a permanent fix. The tech giant is currently working with device manufacturers to release updated camera drivers expected to restore full camera functionality. It doesn’t have an ETA for the driver rollout yet, but it promised to share more information when it becomes available. 

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