Standard VGA Adapter Help - Much Appreciated.

itzDMS · 04 Jan 2011

So my father had to reinstall his OS due to it running slow. we went to W7 Home Basic.
Since then And have had a problem with his card. i have no idea in anyway what graphics card he has. if any one can help me locate a driver for my father whould help so much.
is there any information i need to paste for you guys to help me?
im sure its Nvidia, but its a very old machine so i have no clue.
any help appreciated! so my father can stop complaning about how big the resolution is. :P

cheers,
Daniel!

itzDMS · 04 Jan 2011

Please help!

TVeblen · 04 Jan 2011

The way I have always done this is to look on the video card itself.

If you are comfortable working inside your computer:

Power down and disconnect the power cord from the power supply.
Use anti-static precautions - touching the computer case before handling any components is sufficient in most cases.
Remove the video card (one screw holds it into the case frame. Rock it slightly as you pull straight up.
Put the card on an anti-static surface (at least not metal)- cardboard is OK in a pinch.

Now carefully inspect the circuit board and write down all the numbers. The Model number is almost always printed on the circuit board.

Mike Connor · 04 Jan 2011

Get this;

Belarc Advisor - Free Personal PC Audit

Run it on the machine and it should tell you what you need to know. Some graphic cards may be "invisible" to the system unless the proper drivers are installed, in such a case you need to open the case and look at the card. Many modern machines have "on-board" graphics, this means they are integrated into a chip on the main board, and there is no "extra" card visible in the expansion slots.

QUOTE
A video card, video adapter, graphics accelerator card, display adapter, or graphics card is an expansion card whose function is to generate output images to a display. Many video cards offer added functions, such as accelerated rendering of 3D scenes and 2D graphics, video capture, TV-tuner adapter, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, FireWire, light pen, TV output, or the ability to connect multiple monitors (multi-monitor). Other modern high performance video cards are used for more graphically demanding purposes, such as PC games.
Video hardware can be integrated on the motherboard, often occurring with early machines. In this configuration it is sometimes referred to as a video controller or graphics controller. Modern low-end to mid-range motherboards often include a graphics chipset developed by the developer of the northbridge (i.e. an nForce chipset with Nvidia graphics or an Intel chipset with Intel graphics) on the motherboard. This graphics chip usually has a small quantity of embedded memory and takes some of the system's main RAM, reducing the total RAM available. This is usually called integrated graphics or on-board graphics, and is low-performance and undesirable for those wishing to run 3D applications. A dedicated Graphics Card on the other hand has its own RAM and Processor specifically for processing video images, and thus offloads this work from the CPU and system RAM. Almost all of these motherboards allow the disabling of the integrated graphics chip in BIOS, and have an AGP, PCI, or PCI Express slot for adding a higher-performance graphics card in place of the integrated graphics. Despite the performance limitations, around 95% of new computers are sold with integrated graphics processors, leaving it for the individual user to decide whether to install a dedicated Graphics card.UNQUOTE

Quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_card

Regards....Mike Connor