As part of my online photography sessions here on Panoramic Ireland I give one to one online photography reviews, tuition and help aspiring photographers to improve their portfolio and photographic skills.

Recently after my webcam stopped working I decided to use my GoPro Hero 9 as a webcam. 

GoPro's website lists this as a feature of the action camera, also available on the Hero 8 and new Hero 10 and via a more complicated route on earlier models.

The software GoPro Webcam can be downloaded here.

In my case, using Windows 10 and with the Hero 9 updated to the latest firmware, the software worked fine for the first use but then stopped working subsequently.

In fact, every time I plug it in Windows notification tells me that there is a Camera Connection Error and to try and reconnect the camera.

Of course this produces no different results, always the error.

At first, after doing some research, where I found many with the same problem, I decided to uninstall and reinstall the GoPro Webcam software.

That solved nothing of course, I'm not a big fan of uninstalling and reinstalling software as it rarely cures any problems.

Interestingly though the uninstaller wanted me to remove Microsoft's News Suite. Not a problem, as that is something I never use.

So what do I do now?

Well, this is my workaround; until some kind of fix is issued as it is definitely a software bug - edit: it's still a problem but this method works.