Today we’ll talk about how to install the driver on the video card. Although a similar topic has been raised more than once in printed educational publications and on the pages of various forums and sites, it is still in demand. The reason for this is the reduction in the cost of computing systems.
The fact is that many people, having bought their first home computer, are faced with issues that for users with experience seem elementary. One of them is
how to install the driver on the video card. In this article, we will try to comprehensively answer it, clarifying the main points. But first, a little theory.
In any computer (we do not consider servers and remotely controlled systems) a video card is necessarily installed. Structurally, this device can be represented by a separate small PCB board, with soldered microcircuits, electronic elements and a comb of sliding contacts, through which it is connected to the connector on the motherboard. This solution is called discrete.
Its opposite is the video adapter built into the central processor (chipset). This became possible due to the improvement of the manufacturing process of controlled keys - transistors, and the placement of several devices at once on a single chip chip. In order to figure out how to install the driver on the video card, this difference can be ignored, since the principle of operation of both solutions is the same.
It is not enough just to physically connect the video card to the board (discrete version). It is necessary to install a special control program in the system, which serves as a kind of "intermediary" between all the other software and hardware components of the computer and the video adapter. That is, drivers for the video card are needed.
They can be downloaded from the manufacturer’s website. So, the most widespread are solutions from NVidia, ATI (AMD) and Intel. First you need to decide on the model of the card - it is indicated on the box. You can also use the GPU_Z utility. Having indicated the operating system and model on the site, you need to download the driver. This is usually a single executable file. After that, you just need to run it. If a warning appears about installing an unsigned driver, you can safely ignore it. For solutions from ATI, the Net Framework package must be installed on the system (downloaded from the Microsoft website). But it is simple. But how to install the driver on the video card, if for some reason the standard method did not work?
Sometimes it’s possible. First you need to extract the downloaded archive files. There are two ways: at startup (even if its final result is unsuccessful) a folder is created on the disk in which everything you need is located; force unzip the installation package using Total Commander by clicking on the Ctrl + Page Down file and copying its contents to the previously created folder. Next, open the device manager (properties of the “Computer” shortcut) and proceed to “Video adapters - Driver - Update - Installation from the specified location”. In the explorer window that appears, you need to specify the folder with the unpacked files, but not any, but those whose extension is inf. If the driver is suitable for the system, then it will be installed, although with a number of warnings (you can ignore it).
You can update the "firewood" on the video card through the operating system service. To do this, in "Start - Control Panel - Update" you must enable the download of non-core files.