How to Upgrade Drivers for a Video Card

Changes to your operating system or new software may cause conflicts with your video card or video card driver. If the manufacturer of your video card has created a new driver, you may solve the problem by installing it. You might also upgrade the driver to take advantage of a new video format.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Video Cards

Finding out What Video Card You Have

1. Right-click on My Computer.

2. Select Properties.

3. Click on the Device Manager tab.

4. Click on the plus sign to the left of "Display adapters." The name of the driver appears. Make a note of it.

Finding and Downloading a Newer Driver

5. Go directly to the Web site of your driver's manufacturer.

6. Click on the link for your video card, brand of video card or brand of video chip (if you don't have a separate video card).

7. Follow instructions to download the driver.

8. Save the file on your computer's desktop.

Installing the New Driver

9. Find the existing driver in the Device Manager, as before. Right-click on it and select Remove.

10. Double-click on the icon for the downloaded file.

11. Follow installation instructions.

12. Restart the computer.

Tips & Warnings

• Only download a later version of your video card's driver. Don't try the driver for another card; you may see unpredictable results.
• Attempting to change video drivers could make your computer inoperable. Get professional help if you need it.

[dorion]

on 6/25/2009 The helpful information. Thanks

[Bewildered]

on 5/26/2008 I tried to download an older computer game after that it wouldn't even work and it messed up all of my other games new and old. When i clicked on one it said video card doesn't meet minimum requirements. It requires a 32MB video card that is DirectX 9.0 and 32-bit compatible. I went to our display settings, device manager. then the troubleshoot tab, and it wouldn't let me change any of the settings. What do i do to change it? Do i up-grade? It won't even let me uninstall the game that i tried to put on.

[PeterN]

on 8/4/2007 Interesting article on how to install new video drivers. However; firstly, when looking through Properties on My Computer, I had to go through the Hardware tab before getting to Device Manager. And when I get the Device manager display up, there is no entry for Display Adaptors.

I assume, since I can view video on my computer, that I have a video card (or something which does the same job) but I cannot find it and thus cannot update my driver. I need to get the driver updated in order to use my DVD drive. Any other ideas on how I can find out what my video card is?
Regards to all
Peter Nicoll

[CurlyMoe]

on 6/18/2007 Make sure you save a Windows 'restore point' to restore your system back to in case things go awry. I found out the hard way. Spent 5 hours troubleshooting because the new driver would not let the sytem boot up in normal mode and Windows had not automatically created a restore point.

on 11/22/2005 If you upgrade your video card driver in Windows to one that doesn't work, you may be able to recover gracefully.

Start up in Safe Mode (typically press F8 before your computer starts to load Windows). NT machines usually offer a start up options selection briefly. Choose VGA mode.

You may then be able to replace your video card driver with one that is known to at least function - probably the one you had before the upgrade.