Are your video drivers vanquished or void?

Drivers.biz feels for you! When your video card won't work, you can't see very well! Or, at the very least, you get poor image quality on your monitor, and slow resolution of complex images. Video drivers control the display properties of your computer, by converting the output from the CPU to the proper display format on the monitor. Various parameters of the video display, such as colors, resolution, size, and refresh rate are all controlled by the driver.

Driver problems or incompatibilities can especially affect graphics-intensive software, such as Photoshop or computer games. Lately, we've been hearing the most complaints about Trident video drivers, as well as ATI.

Today, video cards are like miniature computers within the bigger PC, even complete with their own processor and memory. Driver support, including the creation of up-to-date drivers, with no bugs, is getting more critical for high end machines, so choose your video card based on the reputation for support from the manufacturer.

Common errors:

• Random freezes or hang ups
• General protection faults, or GPFs
• "A fatal exception has occurred at _____." The IPF error message can give you hints about where the problem is occurring
• "Illegal Operation" message, could be a video driver problem, or incorrect .DLL files in memory.
• Very slow graphics rendering on the screen

Make sure that you really have a video card problem and not a dying monitor. A dying monitor often changes hue or looks "glittery." If you get an intermittent change in hue, or a consistent change in hue, there is a strong chance the monitor is on its last legs.

Need a solution?

Further below is a list of the major video card manufacturers, but first here are some of the top chipset creators (not necessarily video card manufacturers), for more advanced users:

• 3Dlabs
• ATI
• Cirrus Logic
• Imagination Tech
• Intel
• Matrox Graphics
• NVIDIA
• S3
• STMicroelectronics
• Tennmax

Who manufactured your video card?

Since you can't remove a graphics card in Device Manager, change its driver to the "Standard VGA driver."

Make sure you know who built your graphics card by checking your Control Panel, and clicking on "System." Then click the "Device Manager" tab, and look down the list for "Display adapters" If you click the plus sign (+) beside "Display adapters" you will see your video card listed.

But the most accurate way to find out the manufacturer of your card is to look on it for an FCC ID#. Then go to the FCC ID help site and enter the number in the proper field. This will give you the name of the manufacturer. Then visit the manufacturer's site using the Drivers.biz list at the top of this page's right column.