How do i get a Netbooks CONNECTED Webcam to work when Windows says it isnt?

Okay so my friend has an Acer Aspire one 531h/AO531h Netbook with integrated webcam. Her hard drive recently died and had a new one put in, Windows 7 Starter reinstalled, Since that she hasnt been able to get her Webcam working which is understandable considering that she hasnt had any drivers installed. However i ran the Acer Hardware vendor detection to find out the correct Manufacturer for the webcam (some Acer models have different ones, this one was Chicony) and downloaded the drivers for it. however its saying the Webcam isnt connected but how would the Acer Detection Program pick up the manufacturer if it wasnt connected? Theres also No Imaging devices option in the device manager, however no yellow or red icons show up in the device manager which means everything should be in order. I've also tried the actual Webcam Software and Windows Update, so far nothing has worked. I had a similar problem with my Dell Vostros fingerprint reader but in the end it just randomly worked. The webcam is usually connected to the LCD so whoever replaced her hard drive would have had no reason to touch that. I'm a PC engineer and this is by far one of the most annoying situations ive ever had.

I've had Bad experiences with both Acer and Dell and would never buy or recommend buying from them, i remember when i phoned Acer support a few years ago because i had a CPU problem, they asked me what OS i was running, i told them Windows 7 64 bit and they said the thing wasnt designed for 64 bit OS's despite being a 64 bit processor and having over 4GBs of Ram. Insane

Has anyone else had this problem or does anyone know how i can fix it?

Thanks

 

I had this issue with my acer and had to replace the webcam board. Hopefully its just a driver issue in your case.

 

Hmm, I was gonna say its the wrong drivers but if it isnt the hardware device list then its not that.

Is it there in safe mode?