Video Driver/Card

[DQuest]

Help! I brought home an old computer from work (Pentium II 400 Mhz)and reformatted the hard drive to start over. I made one mistake...I forgot to check on what type of video card it has. The plug and play feature ID'd it as a Standard PCI graphics adapter (VGA) and my Monitor is a Gateway 2000 Vivitron 1572 (mine says nothing else after this on the monitor although the drivers for the monitor only list the options as Vivitron 1572FS, 1572DG, 1572 DGM, or 15. The problem is that I do not know what type of video card mine has. I pulled the case off and looked inside at the port where the monitor plugged in hoping to find some clue (I assume this is the video card). I tried to look back through the paperwork but at the office but it is sketchy and I know the computer was built by a smaller operator here in town. Any advice???

[DQuest]

Sorry forgot to relay the problem this causes...although you likely all already know. My monitor at work had higher resolution and my computer at home will only allow 2 colors or 16 colors...pretty much unworkable in this day. I know the card has higher capabilities...I just don't know how to find out what the card is so I can try and find the correct drivers. Help!!!

[angelface]

You will have to take the video card out and look on it to see what type it is. There also some numders under the manufacturers name that will help.Yes the video card is the one that the monitor plugs into.The name is usually on the chip near the center.

[DQuest]

Thanks for the help Angelface. I pulled the video card and there is no manufacturer listed on the card. There is a serial # listed and there is the name Winbond and Hosonic but these are on components on the card. Is there any other way to tell, or is there any way to get my computer to read it as a generic card with sufficient capacity to show 256 colors??? Please help again!!

[steveo]

On the video card itself you will see the chipset. It looks like a black square chip and probably the biggest chip on the card. Usually written on the chip is a number, name or both (ESS-1401) as an example. You could also look for a FCC number which will be a longer sequence of numbers (in some cases three sets of three numbers) as an example. These markings are typical in most cases and can be used to track down a driver. Another thing to keep in mind is the operating system you plan to use be it windows95/98/me/xp. The driver you use should match the operating system.

You can try here (http://www.driverguide.com) for drivers using step three.

username...drivers
password...all

The 2/16/ colours your seeing is based off the generic driver windows loads. Depending on the capability of the video card, once you install the proper driver this value will increase beyond 256 but you have to set that up by right clicking on the desktop and entering properties in which you would click on the settings tab. Do this after you've installed the video driver.

good luck

[DQuest]

Steveo- Thanks for your help. I'll try all of that this afternoon when I am at that computer. By the way, once I find those numbers, how do I go about tracking down the drivers with the numbers you mentioned? Does DriverGuide have mechanisms to search by the chipset #'s, etc.?

Thanks again!!

[steveo]

You won't have a problem using the search functions. Provisions are in place to search a few different ways so you basically fill in the blanks and go.


Good Luck