Unknown IP camera keeps showing up in my network, cant get rid of it.

Layback Bear said:

From post #3

I had previously malwarebytes scans on all computers and nothing showed up. I even went as far as complete clean re-install of windows 7 on a new hard drive for one of my wired PCs and the camera still showed up.

This does not add up. (Clean re-install of Windows 7)

We are missing some information.

Are these computers in a domain/network?
Are any of these computers a laptop with a built in camera?
Was the computer you did a clean re-install hooked to the network at the time of the install?
A clean install of Windows 7 does not install cameras.

How did you do a clean re-install?
Did you do it like one of these tutorial. If so which one.

By Brink:
Clean Install Windows 7

By Bare Foot Kid:
Clean Install : Factory COA Activation Key

By Gregrocker:
Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7

Could you post the System Specs of the troubled computer?

System Info - See Your System Specs

More Info: These computers are on a network, after the clean install I did connect it to a network, not during the install, because the clean install was on my htpc, and I use a network cablecard tuner for my television, the screenshots are not from the pc with the clean install.


How I did the clean install-

took an old sata II 2.5 inch drive from an old laptop,

used killdisk to erase everything,

then installed in the pc and did an install of windows 7 home premium, from an authentic disk I bought on Newegg years ago when I made this pc.



The camera isnt "installed", but you know how if you have a printer on network or a bluetooth device, and you go to "add devices" and it scans for devices, there it shows up.
The camera shows up an all the 3 pcs, its why I think it is an actual wifi camera, maybe a neighbor's, I just dont understand why it shows up the "network" page.

Maybe as another poster said, windows just picks up things, even not in the network, if so that would bring me a little bit for comfort, since I do believe my next door neighbor does had a ADT. I did a reverse check of the MAC address using an online directory , MAC_Find: Vendor/Ethernet/Bluetooth MAC Address Lookup and Search, and it did point to a company that makes IP cameras( Sercomm ), and is a provider to ADT security. I would ask my neighbor but they are never home or sleeping, I think they work graveyard or something where they have a weird schedule.

Lastly I did have a built in webcam in my laptop, but I had opened it up and phsyically unplugged it from the circuit board, 2 years ago when I got the laptop, I am a little paranoid

Thanks for taking time to help me

BJB said:

I get something very similar, in my case it's called a Phone but its Properties reveal it as a Nexus 4 tablet. It does not show in my router as a connected client and it has no IP. I believe it's probably located next door as there are no Nexus tablets here. It disappears off the network map after a short while but usually reappears if I refresh it. It used to be a concern but I no longer worry about it as without an IP it can't access my internet connection nor, more importantly, my home network.

EDIT - it's now disappeared so I guess that whoever was using it has turned it off, which happens a lot. Perhaps the camera you are seeing is a security camera on a nearby property. If so that would always be on.

chev65 said:

I have phones and other devices show up here all the time. They come and go. Windows picks up all kinds of wireless devices on different networks, even when they aren't connected to your own network.

This is typical Windows behavior and it doesn't mean you are being spied on or that you have malware.

chev65 said:

Layback Bear said:

Chev65 I need help here to understand.
I don't use wifi anything.

I'm I correct that when installing Windows 7 is does not install wifi?
One has to do that after the install is completed if one wants wifi.

So after a re-install how does one pickup wifi hardware until they install wifi on that computer?

I could be learning along with davucini.

I believe it's picking up wireless devices that the router see's through the wireless radio then assumes they are part of the local network and so places them under devices.

This problem has come up multiple times and there never seems to a virus associated with the problem.

andrew129260 said:

Turn off universal plug and play in your router settings. Poof gone. Problem should then be solved.

Universal Plug and Play - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Windows will show these devices in your network folder when the device is available to be used, or available to be installed on the system.

From your screenshot though, you have network discovery turned off. Which makes my above point irrelevant. (I still always recommend disabling UP&P on your router for security reasons.) With that turned off, windows will not show any devices it discovered on the network.

This means the following must be true:

-The device is not part of your network
-The device may or may not be a camera. It might for example be another device wrongly flagged as a camera.
-Since network discovery is off, it is something attached to your pc or avalible with something like bluetooth that does not deal with your actual network.


It may be a bluetooth device, such as a phone or wireless memory card, being detected as a camera. The window you show in the second screenshot is where windows uses all wireless means and wired means to search for new devices to install. It could be a neighbors wireless camera it is detecting by bluetooth or infrared.

Do all the pcs have bluetooth or are wireless in some way? You have a couple media tuners, it could be one of them.

What happens when you right click on it and choose view device webpage vs properties?

Thanks guys, after your suggestions my heart is at ease, 99% of me thought it might be something like this, but that 1% of my psyche is very very loud and hard to ignore. I do used PNP to stream from my DNLA cablecard tuner and attached hardrive to my smartTV with built in DNLA features. And with you guys saying windows picks up signals that aren't necessarily on the network, along with my router settings not showing this device as a connected device in the network, I believe I can quiet down the scared little voice in my head... at least enough to be drowned out by the cooling fans in my PC. :)

TheCyberMan said:

No IP address would suggest it comes from your network.

No IP address suggests it comes from OUTSIDE the network. Every device ON the network will have an IP address.

I know this is an old thread, but people with the identical problem will read it from start to finish searching for a solution, and it doesn't quite have one. I'm curious if the OP ever found out what was going on.

I had the same problem, slept on it, and it didn't show up the next morning. I'm a bit less paranoid about it, because a bigger concern would be if I actually had such a camera and it showed up on somebody else's network. Since it's not my camera, giving me access to it is the opposite of scary. The solution would be to install the drivers if it were that simple. Then I might see the feed from the camera and see if it looks familiar and figure out where it is. Since it appears to be a security camera and ADT's documented installation guide gives me the impression that I'm supposed to have a very specific gateway and corresponding software, I assume they went out of their way not to let strangers have a way of getting access to it.

If it does show up again, I'll probably have a very hard time getting access to its feed, if I can do so at all, but I'm still curious why it's showing up on my network. If I were an ADT customer who happened to have found this thread by searching for the camera model number, I'd want to know why it's showing up on my neighbor's computer.

I had the same camera pop up on my Windows 7 Pro system after I paired my ZTE smart phone with it.

Hi, I found this thread because, due to some change in the last 23 days since I last looked at my network, that weird camera popped up last night in the Network window. I went to log in to my router to try turning off 'network discovery', or at least UPNP - and I couldn't. The username or/and password were not the default, nor what I had written down.

So I hard reset it, and re-did those, and now the camera no longer appears. Last time I messed with it, I'd set up a bunch of not-too-power-user-ish things, but beyond stock, and perhaps something there was allowing the camera to appear. Still, since my login credentials were no longer valid/known, I suspect something more nefarious. I recommend doing as I described above.

I know that this is an old thread, but I thought I'd throw in my 2c. Go into your router, get the MAC addresses of all your legitimate devices, and set up restrictions so that only those devices are allowed to connect. This will stop the "camera" and all other unknown/unauthorized devices from connecting to your router. Save the list of legitimate MAC addresses for future reference.

Make sure that you have encryption turned on in your router -- WPA2 is what you should be using. (If you weren't already using WPA2, then you'll need to establish a new connection on each authorized device after doing this.)

Make sure you have a password set, both for accessing your wireless network, and for accessing the administrative areas of your router. (Use a different password for each.)

If there is something nefarious going on here (i.e. if someone is trying hack your network), then they might know how to get around these restrictions (i.e. they could change their MAC address to a legitimate one). Therefore, from time to time, you should log into your router and see which devices are connected. Compare to the authorized list, to see if anything is connecting which shouldn't be.