[Guest]

?

 

[Guest]

Well I'm not to sure myself, I was wondering the same thing.

 

[dai]

d/l the latest drivers
delete the card from the device manager
reboot pressing f8
choose vga mode
when windows finishes reinstalling the card
then install the new drivers

 

[Guest]

Where do you dl the latest drivers?

 

[mobo]

Do you know the make/model of the card ?

 

[Guest]

My friend says it's a VGA (this is for him)

 

[mobo]

All that means is Video graphics Accelerator..Have him physically look at the card and get thename and /or model number

 

[Guest]

That's what I said (he wouldn't believe me)

Ill post it soon

 

[Guest]

My friend doesn't want to do that. Can you just give me some idea as to where to go to update it.

 

[crjdriver]

Most of the time you can just uninstall the driver from add / remove programs in control panel. Reboot the machine and load the new driver. On a few “problem” updates, I have used a utility called driver cleaner. It deletes all references to the old driver.

You will need to know the brand of chip used in the card. Most cards today are Nvidia or ATI. Both mgf’s have reference drivers on their sites. You can also generally download a driver from the card mgf’s site; although quite a few of them just link to nvidia or ati’s site.

 

[Guest]

Where can I find out what brand it is?

 

[crjdriver]

Look in device manager under display adapters. It should give you the name of the chip; either ati or nvidia. Post back what it says.

 

[Guest]

And what if my computer doesn't have the display adapters button?

 

[crjdriver]

You do not have an entry for display adapter in device manager?

 

[Guest]

no, I don't

 

[crjdriver]

If there is no entry for display adapter, it would mean that you do not have a driver installed and are using the windows standard vga driver. In that case you will need to open the case [and probably pull the card] to read the make of the card.

Another option would be to download and run one of the diagnostic programs that are available on the net.

I would just pull the side cover; sometimes you can read the name of the chip with a flashlight and other times you will need to pull the card.

 

[Guest]

Well my friend is a little worried about taking his computer apart (he won't let me do it), so he wants to know about these diagnostic programs that you speak of.

 

[crjdriver]

Here is a link to belarc. I do not use these so I really cannot tell you how well they work. It should be able to tell you what card is in the system.

 

[dai]

even if no driver is loaded it should still list the card in the device manager.
check for onboard video

 

[crjdriver]

Older cards may be listed. New modern video cards are often not listed because windows does not have any idea what the card is without the driver loaded.