What's wrong with my computer?

Question

I don't know much about computers, but I can tell you that it is vista and was working fine until recently. Basically, I was trying to put in a new graphics card, but it turned out it was the wrong kind, so i put the old one back in. Since then I can't play any of my games (It says My computer isn't good enough for them, when before they worked fine!) and on the website "can you run it?" all the games which I supposedly could play, according to the website, cannot play them anymore. I think I put the graphics card back in correctly. It slots in. I opened my computer a second time to see if it was in properly, and it looked fine. what's wrong with my computer. Im so depressed :(
Oh, and if I can fix it by uninstalling the video drives, then reinstalling them, how do you do it? where do you find them? (I have vista) if you knowplease tell me how very detailed thanks :) 10 points for best answer!

Answer 1

Hello toni :) My name is Cyphonik and I will be more then happy to assist you with this problem. I'm assuming that you powered on the computer while you didn't have a video card in the computer? Well if this is the case your computer lost the drivers. we will get these back and should be very easy. right now your computer is using generic drivers to just keep the monitor on and running.



Okay there could be a few problems and we are going to sort them out pretty much through this post, bear with me because it is going to be long as you wanted a lot of detail. Since you are running windows vista please do the following steps.



1. This is to ensure that you only have 1 video card and not an onboard and graphics card both running at the same time.



Go to Start at bottom

Select control panel

top left of the window you will see classic view, please click that

go to device manager

the very top should have your computer name in the list

right click on your computer name and then select scan for hardware changes.



open up everything and make sure there is no ? marks, ! marks or triangles with ! in them. this indicates there is a problem. Our main focus is going to be display adapters



after opening up the part that shows the display adapters you should only see the one for your video card, however, if you see 2 of them that is because your onboard video is interfering with your video card.



If this is the case open up the one for your on board video card and go to disable, this will disable your on board video card, after this please restart your computer and try the game again.



If you only have 1 video thing showing please right click on this and go to update drivers, this will search for updates to your drivers automatically, if it don't find anything please do a google search with the device name and try to find the download manually or just tell me the name in this post and I will give you the link.



2. Your computer is using your onboard video instead of video card.



right click on the desktop go to personalize

go to display settings at the bottom of the new screen

You will see a picture of 2 monitors, one is large with 1 on it and the ohter grayed out with the number 2 on it, under the monitor pictures you will see a drop down box make sure the one for your video card is showing.



Restart the computer and let me know if this worked, if it did not then we have a few other options still to try.

Answer 2

Ok, what you need to do, it sounds like you not unistalled the original video card, go onto "Add New Hardware" scan for hardware changes, if your video card comes up with a yellow exclamation mark then go onto the video cards properties and uninstall the device totally, restart the computer, your computer should then detect the new hardware (being the video card).

After it has detected it, you should let windows install the recommended devices, if you to download the drivers then go onto the companies website and download them also and install them, there is no need to remove it from the computer, assuming that you have fitted the hardware correctly and has slotted into the grooves fine in the computer.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

The drivers probably messed up. but just to be sure, take out the graphics card, and install it properly one more time.



Now to uninstall the driver,

>right click on my computer icon and click properties

>select device manager from the column on the left

>double click on the display adapter

>right click on whatevers there(except VGA)

>select uninstall

>restart computer in safe mode(use tab or f8 during boot)

>use a software called DRIVER CLEANER PRO(search in download.com or google it)

>select ur gfx card manu.(e.g. nvidia, ati)

>select clean

>now restart pc



Take out the gfx card driver cd, and install from there, or download latest driver from manufacterer site and install.

Hope i helped. Good Luck

Answer 4

Fist download video drivers from makers website.Restart pc and press F8 at boot up this will put you into safe mode.Go to add remove programmes and look for video driver uninstall and restart pc.After pc boots up normally install new drivers for your card.There you are DONE****