AIM video chat problems

DLKeeper1 · #1 07-02-2007, 04:51 PM

My video chat on AIM has been very finnicky. I was able to video chat today with a Mac user (I have a PC), but now I can no longer connect with people to video chat on AIM. Does anyone know what's going on? I get this every time: Your camera is already being used by another application. Please exit all applications that are currently using the camera and try again. But as far as I know there isn't any other application using the webcam.

kerowo · #2 07-02-2007, 05:00 PM

Clean up your room. Har har har.

Seriously, check task manager and see if something didn't let go of it as much as you thought. Also, did you try rebooting? That is usually the first step in troubleshooting weird Windows problems.

DLKeeper1 · #3 07-02-2007, 06:12 PM

the only other program in the task manager was itunes which isn't using the webcam...however, there will a million things running under processes, should i close all of these?

kerowo · #4 07-02-2007, 06:15 PM

No, not unless you are prepared to google all of them first. Randomly shutting down processes isn't a good idea. If you don't see anything obvious in the process list try rebooting and see if that helps.

funkyworms · #5 07-02-2007, 06:44 PM

As of June 4th of this year, AOL had acknowledged this problem and still didn't have an official fix. My guess is they still don't have a fix.

You should stop using AIM anyways. Pidgin is the way to go.

DLKeeper1 · #6 07-02-2007, 08:35 PM

[ QUOTE ]
As of June 4th of this year, AOL had acknowledged this problem and still didn't have an official fix. My guess is they still don't have a fix.

You should stop using AIM anyways. Pidgin is the way to go.

[/ QUOTE ]

Would pidgin allow me to video chat with AIM users?

funkyworms · #7 07-02-2007, 08:42 PM

No, but apparently AIM won't either. There are plenty of open-source video chat programs out there.

DLKeeper1 · #8 07-02-2007, 08:45 PM

[ QUOTE ]
No, but apparently AIM won't either. There are plenty of open-source video chat programs out there.

[/ QUOTE ]

What do you think would be the best option in terms of reliability for video chat?

funkyworms · #9 07-02-2007, 09:05 PM

I don't know how savvy you are. If you are comfortable using IRC then you can use some standalone video chat clients that integrate into IRC. If not, Trillian Pro might be the best commercial solution. It will let you stay on the AIM network.

goldtoes · #10 07-05-2007, 10:48 AM

I always used MSN Messenger (lol) for video chat and it worked great.