Dude, where's my cam?

Hello everyone,
I have a wonderful LG R410 with Windows 7 32Bit with a builtin webcam (called "smartcam").
Just last week I was able to video-skype with it and everything was fine, I didn't even need to install any driver because windows 7 detected and installed it all by itself.
Today I wanted to use it again, but alas, no camera!
There used to be a big nice "LG webcam" icon on the "devices and printers" (from star menu), and now its gone, and doesn't even appear in device manager! Scanning for hardware changes made no change...

I tried resetting BIOS settings, tried system restore, tried some voodoo solutions found on other forums such as "remove battery and restart" but nothing worked!

I'm really afraid its a hardware issue that can't be fixed at home...
Does any of you have any advice? I'm a bit lost...

Thanks in advance, Shai.

 

Do you have any USB hubs attached to your computer? or any devices that have USB hubs?

When I had Vista installed on my LG, I had speakers which had a built-in hub, this disabled my webcam until I restarted.

Shut down your computer without any USB devices and turn it on, check if the problem still exists.

 

Tnx for the suggestion, but it did not work