How to Update Graphics Card Drivers -The Right Way
For my first real post, I thought I’d tackle something relatively easy.
Whether you’re a PC gamer or not, you should always keep your graphics drivers up to date. Graphics drivers not only affect games, they affect the image quality and performance of pictures and videos as well. Unfortunately, if you don’t get rid of the old drivers properly, it can cause you problems down the road. If you follow these simple instructions, you should be able to update those drivers the right way.
I’m going to be giving instructions based on a Windows 7 machine, but you should be able to apply them to WIndows XP as well. If you're running anything older than WIndows XP, changing your graphics drivers should be the least of your worries.
First of all, for those of you who know your way around a PC pretty well and just want the quick answer, here are the steps you need to take to update your drivers properly.
- Download the new drivers.
- Uninstall the old drivers using the windows uninstall page.
- Reboot the PC into safe mode.
- Run Driver Sweeper program to get rid of left over files.
- Reboot again into regular mode.
- Install new drivers.
Now, for those of you who need a little more help, here is a detailed guide on how to do all of the steps above.
1. Download the drivers you want to update.
Almost all graphics cards these days are either based on Nvidia or AMD/ATI chips. The simplest way to get the latest drivers for your card is to go to the manufacturers web site.
If for some reason you aren’t sure what kind of graphics card you have, don’t worry. I’ve got you covered. There’s a fantastic and free little program that no one should be without called CPU-Z. This nifty little application can tell you just about anything about the hardware on your PC. Just install it, open it up and click on the tab at the top that says “graphics”. If you look under the section that says GPU and in the name field, you should see the exact make and model of the graphics card installed on your PC.
You can download CPU-Z for free here.
You can download CPU-Z for free here.
Now another option, which I highly recommend if you’re a gamer, is to use tweaked drivers instead of the standard drivers from the manufacturers. You will get noticeably better quality and performance from them. I personally have been using the drivers from the guys over at tweakforce.com for years and prefer them greatly over the standard ones.
There is a download tab you can click on at the top of their page that will take you to a list of available drivers. Make sure you get the right drivers for your card and your operation system. You can also go onto their forums and get feedback about the latest tweaked drivers and how they perform before you try them.
IMPORTANT- If you’re not 100% comfortable and confident in finding the correct drivers for your PC, then please just stick with the standard drivers from the manufacturer. Installing the wrong drivers can cause you some headaches.
2. Remove your old drivers.
Once you have the setup file for your new drivers downloaded and saved somewhere that you can easily find it, the next step is to remove the old drivers properly. For this, we need another piece of great free software called Driver Sweeper.
Click here to download the latest version of Driver Sweeper.
Click here to download the latest version of Driver Sweeper.
Go ahead and install Driver Sweeper and have it ready. We’re not going to use it quite yet though. First you want to uninstall the drivers through Windows. In Windows 7, you do this by clicking on your start button and then clicking “computer” in the menu that pops up. Once this window is open, make sure it’s maximized and you should see a button at the top that says “Uninstall or change a program”. Click on that button.
You should now see a screen that looks something like this:
Alright, now you will need to find the drivers that are currently installed on your system on the list. Once you've found the drivers, right click on the name and then click on the "uninstall/change" tab that pops up. In order to give you an idea of what you're looking for, here's a screen capture of my current drivers on the uninstall list.
3. Reboot the PC Into safe mode and run Driver Sweeper.
Alright, now we need to make sure we boot into safe mode. If you don't know how to do that, here are instructions for WIndows 7 and Windows XP. Once you are booted up completely in safe mode, start the Driver Sweeper program. You should see this on your screen:
Find the correct drivers for your PC on the list and check the box beside it.
Once you have the box checked next to the correct drivers for your PC, then go ahead and click on the "Clean" button on the bottom right. It should only take a few second for the program to clear all the left over files from your old drivers from your PC. Once it is finished, the program will ask you to reboot. Go ahead and agree and reboot into your regular desktop this time.
4. Install the new drivers.
From here on, I'm going to be using the Nvidia drivers setup as the example. I'm doing this simply because those are the drivers that I use for my graphics card. If you have any other type that you are installing, the process should be very similar.
Now that you're back on your desktop, locate the setup file for the new drivers you downloaded in step one and click on it to begin installing the new drivers. If you are installing Nvidia drivers, you will eventually come to a screen that looks like this:
Go ahead and select the "Custom" option and click on the "next" button at the bottom. This should take you to the next screen.
You should now see a list of drivers you can choose to install. You'll notice in the above picture that you have the option to install 3D Vision drivers. If you have no intention of using 3D glasses for anything on your PC, I highly recommend removing the check from those two boxes. There is no need to install drivers for something you're never going to use. If the HD audio driver that is to be installed is newer than the one on your PC, then go ahead and leave that checked. Also, depending on where you get your drivers, you may see an option for installing PhysX drivers in the above list. As with the audio drivers, if the one's to be installed are newer, then go ahead and install those as well. I also recommend always checking the box next to "Perform a clean installation"
Once you have everything checked that you want to install, go ahead and click on the "Next" button. The installation process typically takes a minute or two. Once it is done, the install program should ask you to reboot your machine, say yes and let it reboot. If for some reason it doesn't ask, then reboot manually.
Once you are back onto your desktop, you're all finished. Congrats! You just updated your graphics card drivers the right way. In some cases, you may need to change your desktop resolution back to what it was before, but in most cases, everything should automatically go back to the settings you had them at before.
I hope you found this guide helpful. Feel free to leave me a comment if you have any questions. I'll do my best to answer you quickly.
You should now see a list of drivers you can choose to install. You'll notice in the above picture that you have the option to install 3D Vision drivers. If you have no intention of using 3D glasses for anything on your PC, I highly recommend removing the check from those two boxes. There is no need to install drivers for something you're never going to use. If the HD audio driver that is to be installed is newer than the one on your PC, then go ahead and leave that checked. Also, depending on where you get your drivers, you may see an option for installing PhysX drivers in the above list. As with the audio drivers, if the one's to be installed are newer, then go ahead and install those as well. I also recommend always checking the box next to "Perform a clean installation"
Once you have everything checked that you want to install, go ahead and click on the "Next" button. The installation process typically takes a minute or two. Once it is done, the install program should ask you to reboot your machine, say yes and let it reboot. If for some reason it doesn't ask, then reboot manually.
Once you are back onto your desktop, you're all finished. Congrats! You just updated your graphics card drivers the right way. In some cases, you may need to change your desktop resolution back to what it was before, but in most cases, everything should automatically go back to the settings you had them at before.
I hope you found this guide helpful. Feel free to leave me a comment if you have any questions. I'll do my best to answer you quickly.
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