Vista Problem (I know and I'm Sorry..)

I HAVE searched, yes there are posts about the compatibility of Vista and SL, but...

The posts are by people who have far more technical knowledge than I have.

Same problem, outdated drivers, but how do I solve it? I dont know how to download new drivers, is it easy? I cant say what they are even, as its my sisters problem not mine.
I got her all fired up about joining SL, and the blooming thing wont work on her new computer!

Any NON techie help please?

thanks,
Katie

Hi Katie ^_^

The first thing would be of course to find out which videocard your sisters PC is using. You can do that by going to "Start->Control Panel->Device Manager" There you should look for an entry thats called something like "video adapter" or something like that (sorry, i use Linux mainly ^^; ). Click on the little + in front of this entry. Most of the time youd find either "ATI" or "Nvidia" there.
For ATI cards you need to go to:
http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html

and for Nvidia cards go to:
http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

In both cases you have to navigate to the drivers you will need to download by making a few selections (graphics driver, Geforce 7 series, Windows Vista 32bit in nvidias case, if you use the 32bit version of Vista, which i guess you do. for ATI it would most likely be vista 32bit, radeon, X1950 series) as long as you get the version of your Vista copy right, the drivers will be the right one too, cause the drivers will be "one size fits all" when it comes to the version of your videocard (in almost all cases).
Once you got the driver its easy. Some recommend to uninstall your old driver beforehand, and its the better way really, but the new drivers should do that on their own. So just start the driver installation by doubleclicking on the downloaded driver and let it do its thing ^_^
If it should ask you if you want to install the driver, tho its not signed or something like that, just chose the option that says something like "install anyway". After Vista finally installed the thingy, asking you to reboot, simply do so. done ^_^

-Asriazh

There are a"easy" ways to update drivers. If the first one does not help, go to the next one:

1. Find the Windows Update button (I think it's under "Tools" in Internet Explorer, but it's easy to find). Click on it, then choose to update Windows from Microsoft.

2. Go to your computer manufacturer's website, and look for their "Driver Update" section (or something similar). Following their instructions step by step (I'm only familiar with Dell's process for doing this, and it's amazingly easy--they can read the configuration of your machine if you let them, and then either give you or tell you where to find the correct new drivers. Other manufacturers may be more complicated).

3. Find out what kind of Video Card (Graphics Card, Graphics Processing Unit, they mean mostly the same thing) your PC has--this is most easily done by looking at the invoice which came with the machine, or by right clicking on "My Computer" selecting properties, and looking at the hardware the computer has (this is easier than it sounds, just poke around). Once you find out what kind of video card you have, go to the manufacturer's website and look and see if they have new drivers for it.

4. Call your PC manufactuer's tech support and ask them to walk you through it.

Installing the driver is really easy. You just download, and then follow the instructions. After you do it the first time, it'll probably only take you a few minutes to do again.

Good luck!

THANK YOU both!

I can actually understand that