Troubleshooting Video Drivers: What Do I Need to Know?

[JerryClower]

I want to talk about video drivers. When I go to my device manager I have no 'known' video drivers. There is a tab that is titled 'Other devices'. When I click on it, there is a driver titled "Video Controller (VGA Compatible)". The manufacturer is unknown and I cannot install any software to make it run. When I attempt to install software for it I get two options. They are : Install the software automatically (Recommended) and Install the software from a list of specific location (Advanced) Neither of them bring any help. They just say "the hardware was not installed because your PC has no software" or something like that. I have a couple of questions.

1) What is this Video Controller?
2) How do I get a video driver/card?
I'm trying to figure all of this out because I'm trying to run a computer game and it keeps saying I don't have Directx 9 ( I do ). Also, I recently "restarted" my computer. By that I mean I started a whole new Windows and deleted all my old files and started with a new copy of XP.

Now onto these video drivers/cards.
Do you always download them, or can you go to stores and buy CD's with them on them?

Also, someone explain the differences between a video card and a video driver.

Sorry if this is too much all at once. Be sure to quote me at needed parts to avoid confusion.

 

[rcgldr]

You can run belarc's advisor to see what video card or chip set you have:

http://www.belarc.com/Programs/advisor.exe

Then do a web search for that video card's driver.

 

[hansonian]

You can do a Google search for Directx 9 drivers. You'll find them on Microsoft's website. I do believe the have a newer version out now, maybe Directx 11.

Depending on the manufacturer of your PC you could go to their website and usually under the "Support" section they'll have a place to download drivers. I would enter the model number and go from there. If you built it yourself you should have drivers that came with it.

Also, someone explain the differences between a video card and a video driver.

A video card is a piece of hardware that plugs into the mother board which processes the video signal out to your monitor. The video driver is the software that tells the hardware how to function. You could compare it to a driver (the software) in a car (the hardware) controlling how the car moves.

 

[pallidin]

DirectX generally doesn't work well(if at all) if the video subsystem is running in VGA compatibility mode.
Correct the video driver issue as mentioned above.

If the video card is an "add-on" you may need to open up the computer and note the make and model# of that card and, like said before, do a web-search to download the drivers.

 

[Chronos]

Do you have an onboard video chip [on motherboard]?. If so, you need to disable that before you can activate the plug in card.