Windows 7: Need to find out what video card I have

I finally just installed Windows 7 professional 32 bit on my laptop. I previously had Windows Vista. In addition to my laptop screen I have an Acer monitor to dual screen with. It worked fine with vista but will not work now that I've installed Windows 7. I also cant play and video games from Steam or Starcraft II. I'm pretty sure all I need to do is update the drivers for my video card but I cannot find what type of video card I have.



I have gone to device manager and under display adapters the only thing listed is "Standard VGA Graphics Adapter". I know I have an NVIDIA video card, I'm pretty sure geforce 7600 or somewhere close to there but I cannot remember exactly what and am not 100% positive it's even a geforce. Regardless I am trying to figure out how to find out what type of video card I have so that I can download and update the drivers so that I can use my second monitor and play my games. I have tried downloading the drivers for the gerforce 7600 but when i tried installing them i got an error saying it couldnt find the graphics card so I'm assuming that's not the video card I have or there is something I need to do to "activate" my video card, however I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as activating a video card.

The error I get when trying to play starcraft II says "The videocard is not accessible because no display drivers are installed, another 3D application has exclusive access or the machine was locked."

So if anyone has any helpful information that would be greatly appreciated.

First step...
Download
GPU-Z Download - Softpedia
From there you can find out what GPU you have and
we can help you better.
Might want to install http://www.softpedia.com/progDownloa...load-6980.html
So you can make sure MB etc. drivers are up to date.

Hello Booya and welcome to the forum

Have a look here; Drivers & Downloads

and in case the direct link doesnt work try this and give in your laptop details to get to the drivers; Welcome to Home User Support
click on Drivers and downloads

I hope this helps

rvbfan i downloaded that first thing and it still says Standard VGA Graphics Adapter as my video card.

Pooch that site wont let me select windows 7 only vista...

That is the Dell site so maybe they have not made a driver for windows 7.
Have you tried to install the vista driver?

Edit PS if you look to the right of the web page there is a section on compatability, maybe you are lucky and can still find a seven driver

The vista drivers worked and finally once I used internet explorer the dell website auto-detected the video card I have, which was the geforce 8600.

Thanks a lot for the help

I find that the DxDiag search is easier, in addition with more detailed information.