Solved Problem with Camera Lag

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thatrjkid

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Jan 3, 2021
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Lately I have been noticing on Zoom and sometimes discord that my camera begins to slow down and lag behind my audio. It will get to the point where there is a solid 10 seconds between clapping my hands and actually seeing it on the screen. My laptop is less than 2 years old but out of warranty so Im hoping there is some sort of easy fix I havent thought of. Its a decent one too so I dont think it would be overloaded or anything.

I went to zoom support and they suggested using an external camera but I want to avoid that if possible since there is already one in my laptop. Any help is appreciated!
 
I've seen that at work on notebooks with an older CPU and on systems that are running a lot of services in the background.
Have you tried restoring your notebook into factory default settings? -and what brand/model is it BTW?
 
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georgeks said:
I've seen that at work on notebooks with an older CPU and on systems that are running a lot of services in the background.
Have you tried restoring your notebook into factory default settings? -and what brand/model is it BTW?
Click to expand...
Its a Lenovo Thinkpad X1. Would going to default settings get rid of all of my stuff?
 
sounds like a resources issue to me - that is, lack of.
although a factory reset would be the best option, firstly I'd be doing a lot of maintenance to see if that offers a quick fix.

get CCleaner or Glary Disk Cleaner and let them clean up the junk.
go into msconfig > Services tab and turn off any unwanted programs.
while there use the Startup tab to go into Task Manager and go to its Startup tab and disable and unwanted programs there as well.

see if that helps.
if not, start into Safe Mode and see if that helps the lag, if it does, it's definitely a resource issue.
that is, too many programs running, background tasks etc.
it could be as simple as Windows Updates occurring while you were Zooming.

and yes - a fresh reload of Windows will kill all your programs and personal files, so make sure you have a backup of all your data and the installation media and product keys to reload everything if you do go down that path.

personally, after two years, I'd be doing the fresh reload option - you'll get the PC back to how it was at day one but yes, the downside is all the tweaks you have done over the last two years would need doing over the next few hours. :)
 
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Bruce said:
sounds like a resources issue to me - that is, lack of.
although a factory reset would be the best option, firstly I'd be doing a lot of maintenance to see if that offers a quick fix.

get CCleaner or Glary Disk Cleaner and let them clean up the junk.
go into msconfig > Services tab and turn off any unwanted programs.
while there use the Startup tab to go into Task Manager and go to its Startup tab and disable and unwanted programs there as well.

see if that helps.
if not, start into Safe Mode and see if that helps the lag, if it does, it's definitely a resource issue.
that is, too many programs running, background tasks etc.
it could be as simple as Windows Updates occurring while you were Zooming.

and yes - a fresh reload of Windows will kill all your programs and personal files, so make sure you have a backup of all your data and the installation media and product keys to reload everything if you do go down that path.

personally, after two years, I'd be doing the fresh reload option - you'll get the PC back to how it was at day one but yes, the downside is all the tweaks you have done over the last two years would need doing over the next few hours.
Click to expand...
thank you for all of that info. I did the disk cleaner and disabled some programs but the problem was still there. I tried safe mode but couldn't figure out how to use safe mode but connect to the internet to open a meeting.

Any other ideas on what to do? If not, do you have any tips for making the reload as fast and easy as possible. My life is in this laptop right now because of school so I'd hate for anything to go wrong.
 
although the external camera option would probably have the same outcome, that's the thing with computers, sometimes the left-field ideas can get lucky.
so while in my eyes it shouldn't make any difference, I can't say for certain that it won't help either.

as to Safe Mode, you may not have had networking turned on.
try this; hit the Windows key and R together, in the Run box that pops up, type in msconfig and hit OK.
on the Boot tab, tick Safe boot and tick Network.
hit OK and reboot.
when it does, the graphics will be chuncky and some thing may not work as it only brings up the core services that allow Windows to run, but hopefully the internet and camera will work, and since no other background tasks would have started, your lag should be gone as well, if my theory pans out.
 
Ok, this is kind of embarrassing but I think I may have possibly discovered the problem. I noticed that my laptop had been in the battery saver mode. I switched it to best performance and Ive only had one meeting since then but I dont think i really noticed as much lag. Could this have been the problem?
 
yes I just had a two hour meeting on zoom and no lag. sorry about that but thank you all for all of the help! I might still have to consider a reset at some point just to keep things smooth.
 
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