I've been told to download drivers, but I'm scared.

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Updating drivers

Firstly there's no reason to feel any trepidation if you've been told to update the drivers for your graphics card, sound card, motherboard or game controller. As long as you are capable of clicking on a few links on a website and can read, it is incredibly straightforward. Nearly all manufacturers now supply new drivers in 'executable format' - which means that you just have to run a program, once you've downloaded it, to install the new drivers. 

Drivers are just software that is used by games to 'talk' to your hardware and, in the case of graphics cards, are updated fairly regularly and posted to the manufacturer's website.

Locating the right drivers

If you've been following the troubleshooting advice on this site, you should know how to run your Dxdiag to find out the exact make and model of the piece of hardware (e.g. graphics card) that you are trying to update. If you've contacted a Helpdesk or Technical Support Department of the game publisher they will normally tell you which card you have and the website that you can download the drivers from. If they don't, run your Dxdiag to find out what hardware you have.

Once you have found out what your hardware is, you need to go to the manufacturer's website to locate the new drivers. It should be fairly easy to find the manufacturer's site using a search engine (you can use the Google engine from this site - at the bottom of the page), but I have included an index for the most popular graphics cards and sound cards.

Graphics card websites
Sound card websites 

Additionally www.windrivers.com has links to just about every driver/manufacturer site.
 
At the website

Once you've found the right website, you should be looking for a link for 'Drivers', 'Support' or 'Technical Support', or 'downloads', or something along these lines. Then you will need to find the drivers for the version of Windows and the hardware that you have. You will normally just have to click on more links to do this and get to the right location.

Some sites require you to agree to a licence agreement before allowing you to download files. Some sites also state that the drivers are unsupported and that you should use other drivers. Don't spend too much time worrying about either of these statements.

Downloading

Once you have clicked on 'Agree' or 'Download' or the icon of the file itself, the following will appear:



[Note: "rkv2.exe" and "www.thegamestree.co.uk" will be replaced by the file and location you are actually downloading]

You MUST always select 'Save this program to disk'. After you click 'OK' you will be asked a location to save it to:

The 'Save in:' box at the top specifies where the file will be downloaded to on your hard drive. I would recommend that you always download files to your desktop. This way you will never forget where you downloaded them to and their presence there will be a reminder if you don't have time to run them straight after downloading.

Click on 'Save' and the following box will appear:



Once the loading bar is full and the file is downloaded, you will receive a message to this effect. The file has now been downloaded.

If the file is very large, you might like to use a download accelerator. DAP is available for download from the Downloads section. 

Installing drivers

Before installing the new drivers, run Dxdiag and note down the driver version for your graphics card/sound card/controller.

Does the name of the file you downloaded end in .zip? If the answer is yes you need a zip utility to extract the file. The most popular zip utility is winzip and can be downloaded from www.winzip.com.

1. Double-click on the file that you have downloaded to run it.

2. If the file is zipped, Winzip will start. Otherwise go to stage 3.
 - a) You should extract the file(s) to a location on your hard drive (again the desktop is good or you could use the Windows temp folder - c:\windows\temp).
 - b) If there are a lot of files extracted, close winzip and double-click on the one called 'readme' or similar and follow the instructions contained there. Now go to stage 5.
 - c) Otherwise double-click on the extracted file (or any called setup, install etc.) Now go to stage 4.

3. If the file is a self extracting archive, you will be prompted for a folder to extract the file(s) to. Otherwise go to stage 4.
  - a) You should extract the file(s) to a location on your hard drive (again the desktop is good or you could use the Windows temp folder - c:\windows\temp).
 - b) If there are a lot of files extracted, double-click on the one called 'readme' or similar and follow the instructions contained there. Now go to stage 5.
 - c) Otherwise double-click on the extracted file (or any called setup, install etc.) Now go to stage 4.

4. If the installer program starts to run, follow the on-screen instructions to install the new drivers. 

5. To check that the new drivers have been installed, run Dxdiag again. If the driver version has changed, you have successfully updated your drivers.

6. If the driver version has not changed then the new drivers have not been installed. Check the website you downloaded the drivers from for any special instructions and make sure that you are following them. Make sure that you are also following any 'readme' instructions correctly.

If you still cannot get the drivers to install, or you are having other problems, contact your hardware manufacturer's technical support for further assistance.