VMware vSphere Open Remote Console not working

I stumbled on a strange problem with VMware remote consoles few days ago. I use VMware vSphere Center daily for managing our virtual machines and all of a sudden the button for opening remote consoles stopped working. It froze the whole vSphere Center for a couple of seconds and then acted like nothing happened. No error was generated, and no console window either. I haven’t tried to open VM console until then that day and Center was running from early morning. Not needing console urgently I presumed tomorrow’s clean boot will solve the problem…

Next day the problem persisted so I found some time to look into it. Turns out I installed an old webcam for video conference the other day and its drivers included a process called FixCamera.exe. With that killed vSphere Center remote consoles immediately started showing up.

The camera in question was some Skype branded 325 USB PC Camera, which I traced to Sonix with SN9C325 chip:
http://www.sonix.com.tw/sonix/product.do?p=SN9C325

The FixCamera.exe process can apparently cause other problems, too:

“When this process is running I can neither start the VMWare Workstation executable, nor the installer for it! Seems pretty hazardous!”
– Rasmus Svendsen @ http://www.file.net/process/fixcamera.exe.html

And so I got a reason to order a new webcam :)

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