Could some WinXP users check something for me?

[Jon P. Inghram]

While doing some minor system tweaking I noticed that the Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) service starts when I open the "My Computer" folder, which seems rather odd since I don't have a camera, scanner, or any other similar HW attached. If I disable the service the event log logs errors indicating that it couldn't open the service when it "needed" to, which seems to be the only side effect of disabling it (besides saving memory.)

I'd just like someone who's never attached any kind of camera or scanner to their XP system to check if that service runs when they open their "My computer" folder too, or if it's something that's left over from when I used a digital camera a while back.

After your computer boots, open up a command line (use Start->Run->Open:cmd.exe if you don't know how) and type:

net start

That'll show a list of all running services. If the imaging one's running, close it for a moment:

net stop "Windows Image Acquisition (WIA)"

And then open the My Computer folder. Check the services again with net start and see if it started back up.

Havn't been able to find anything after googling for a bit, which is why I'm asking for someone else to actually check on their systems.

[az]

I'm using a german windows, but I don't think that service starts here (no german service name with anything like image or camera in it).

AZ

[cjolley]

This is what I did (at work):
1, look at the service (in computer -> manage) it was set to manual.
2, Open my computer -> no result.
3, set service to automatic
4, close and open my computer several times refreshing service view.
5, no result.
6, set it back to manual.

Conclusion: your camera left something behind.
Maybe you can find it by doing "show hidden devices" in device manager.

Chuck

[gt40]

WIA is MIA here.
never had a camera attached, but have a scanner attached.
opened My Computer nemerous times.

[Jon P. Inghram]

Tried everything imaginable, ended going insane and performing a analysis of the registry that ended here:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MyComputer\NameSpace\DelegateFolders\{E211B736-43FD-11D1-9EFB-0000F8757FCD}]
@="Scanners & Cameras"

Apparently the My Computer folder was checking the Scanners & Cameras thingy, which is supposed to fire up WIA. Deleting that key stopped the WIA service from starting up like that.

Being an ex-Amiga user, Windows is absolutely agonizing to look at when you start digging under it's surface.