I wrote this page in the hope of helping others facing the challenge I did in getting a digital microscope with a GL China driver to work with Windows 10.

My dad got a cheap USB digital microscope that came with a GL China driver and AMCap software. The user manual said to try just plugging it in and seeing if it would work; tried that, and it didn't. It said to install the GL China driver from the included mini-CD if that didn't do the trick, so I tried that, but still no dice. After hunting around in Device Manager, I noticed that when the microscope was plugged in, a Lenovo Camera showed up, supposedly properly configured. I also discovered that I could not get an image from the built-in (HP) camera on his laptop, using any camera software (AMCap, or the Camera program built into Windows 10). I discovered (after a while!) that there are camera security settings in Windows 10, and they work! I suspect my dad had set them to not allow anything to access the camera, but in any case, they were the root cause of the trouble. Eventually, by following the steps below, I got it working:

  1. Go to "Camera Privacy Settings" in Settings. (Hit the windows key and search for "Camera", in most cases it will be the second item listed.)
  2. Ensure that "Allow apps to access your camera" is enabled.
  3. Open the Device Manager control panel (as above, hit the windows key and type in "Device"; it should be near the top of the list.)
  4. Plug in the microscope and look under Imaging devices (not Cameras) for something that newly appears when you do so. If it is showing up as anything other than "GL China" (it was "Lenovo ProCam" or something like that in my case), right-click on that device and uninstall the device. Unplug the microscope and plug it in again. If it still doesn't come up as "GL China", install the driver that came with the microscope and try again.
  5. Once the camera shows up in Device Manager as "GL China" when you plug it in, it should work with camera software, including "Camera" (built into Windows 10) and all versions of AMCap (the microscope is typically shipped with a freeware version of this software, no need to pay for the newer versions that are online: this software is very rarely the problem, though it can kick errors that make you think it is).