joshcrank on How to Upgrade Drivers for a Video Card

to fix both of those problems in the past, and I recently had to conduct new searches for all kinds of drivers on my laptop after I reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled the OS.

 

The advice offered in this eHow article is pretty good, but that said, it’s not usually the way I go about updating the drivers on my machines. I tend to make use of Microsoft’s driver update wizard rather than go on the Web and hunt down each individual driver from the hardware manufacturers. It’s a faster way to get the job done, but it also entails letting your computer make the decision for you if it finds multiple drivers for your machine. Choosing them yourself puts you more in control, but it’s often the case that only one driver will work just right on your machine anyway.

 

I’ve included screenshots below to show how to do it the easy way, but it’s equally as easy to explain. Open "My Computer" and click on the "View System Information" link in the top left corner. On the system information window, click the "Hardware" tab, then click the "Device Manager" button. In the device manager window, locate the entry called display adapters and expand it by clicking the plus sign. You may see multiple drivers listed in this category, but chances are that you only have one. In either case, right click on each driver and select "Update Driver" from the menu of options. This opens up the driver update wizard; grant the wizard access to update the driver for this session only, and follow the on-screen prompts until you’re notified that the driver has been successfully updated.

 

That’s basically all there is to it, but there’s something very important to take into consideration when updating your drivers. Sometimes, Microsoft may choose the wrong driver for you, or you may choose the wrong one for yourself if you’ve downloaded one from your hardware manufacturer’s site. When the wrong driver is installed, it can mess up your display a little or a lot, and you won’t likely find out until you reboot and your screen appears in grayscale, or it’s all scrambled, or it’s just completely blank. This might make you panic, but if you heed the following advice, you’ll be ready with a fix in case this happens.

 

Before updating your display drivers, you should always create a restore point on your computer. You do this by using a Windows utility called System Restore. When you create a restore point, you’re basically creating a carbon copy of your system as-is. If your new drivers make your screen all wonky, you can just revert back to this restore point, and everything will be normal again.

 

Create a restore point by clicking the "Start" menu and looking under Accessories, then under System Tools. Finally, click the "System Restore" icon. Follow the on-screen prompts to create a new restore point, and give it a label like the date and the words “display driver” so you’ll identify it easily. Once the restore point is created, go ahead and update your drivers. If they screw up your screen settings, reboot the computer and hold down the F8 key while it’s booting up. This will take you to a boot menu, where you can elect to boot up the system in Safe Mode. Once Windows boots up in Safe Mode, go back to the System Restore utility and follow the on-screen prompts to restore your system to the restore point you created earlier.

 

Finally, if this should happen to you, the next step should be to read the FAQ and support pages of the manufacturer’s websites for your machine’s display cards. They may be aware of potential problems and conflicts already, and if you can’t find the information you need, you can always just e-mail their support staff for more help.