How to update your graphics card driver

Have all your icons on your desktop gone big all of a sudden? Everything appearing in just 16 basic colours instead of millions of colour graduations? Then it sounds like Windows has lost your graphics card settings.

If you’ve gone into Display Properties or Device Manager and found that Windows is reporting your graphics card as a “Standard PCI Graphics Adaptor (VGA)”, then you need to identify what your graphics card inside your PC really is (your PC manufacturer’s documentation may help) and then download a new driver from the manufacturer’s web site or obtain a copy from your original installation / driver CD(s).

If you’ve got the drivers from the appropriate web site or CD and installed them (usually by running Setup or Setup.exe) and it hasn’t made any difference, then following these steps may help:

1. Go to Start Menu > Settings > Control Panel > Display Properties (This direction will depend on your Windows version)

2. Click the Settings tab

3. Click the Advanced button

4. Click the Adapter tab

5. Now select the Update Driver button. I think it’s on this screen but you may have to click a Properties button here and then select the Driver tab.

6. Follow the options to select the graphics card driver from a list.

7. Choose your graphics card manufacturer (e.g. ATi) from the list on the list and then the model (e.g. ATi Rage 128 PCI) from the list on the right.

8. Follow the options to install the driver for the selected model. You may be prompted to insert the Windows 98 CD.

9. Reboot.

10. Go to Start Menu > Settings > Control Panel > Display Properties

11. Click the Settings tab

12. Click the Advanced button

13. Check that this screen now shows “(your monitor model) on (your graphics card model)” rather than “(your monitor model) on Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA)”. If it does, you should now be able to select a higher screen resolution using the slider bar and a higher number of colours from the drop-down list.

If you still have problems following this, please post a message in the appropriate forum message board depending on your version of Windows.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 8:41 am and is filed under General, Hardware, How To. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.