update drivers

Discussion in 'Software' started by dirtfan50, Jan 20, 2010.

  1. dirtfan50

    dirtfan50 Private First Class

    Does anyone know of a program I cna D/L to check for updates as far as drivers and so on??
    This is an old dell desktop with xp home.
    Thank you for anyhelp.
     
  2. Caliban

    Caliban I don't need no steenkin' title!

    There are several programs listed in the Driver Tools section, many of them free, which would probably suffice...

    Personally, I use the old fashioned method - I load up a good system information tool (AIDA, Everest, System Spec, etc.), find the manufacturers of the respective hardware, and go directly to their sites for driver downloads...I believe this gives me a better understanding of the machine, and I don't have to trust a 3rd-party driver harvester...

    Good luck!
     
  3. DavidGP

    DavidGP MajorGeeks Forum Administrator - Grand Pooh-Bah Staff Member

    Hi

    Personally I would not trust any Driver Scanning application as they just get generaic drivers and in the main those wont work with many OEM PCs like your DELL as DELL have custom drivers written for the hardware they supply, which is why many folk have many issues with Audio drivers, they update and while the maker of the Audio chip is right the software in the driver is not.


    So best to see if Dell have any latest drivers for your model and if its working ok then, no need to update (old addage of dont fix what not broken), only really drivers I update and I have custom build PC I build,is network and graphics, but only update graphic card if you are using an addon card from Ati or Nvidia and your using a desktop, laptops can be fussy on the graphic driver used as again its generally a custom driver.
     
  4. dirtfan50

    dirtfan50 Private First Class

    I was just wondering. The pc crashed and reinstalled xp home and now doing all the windows updates ( a ton of them ) and didnt know how or what to pick from dell. Pc is from 2004 and still works great and figured there would be some out there.
    Thank you for the help..
     
  5. plodr

    plodr MajorGeek Super Extraordinaire Moderator Staff Member

    Give the model and all numbers and letters behind it then I can find all the driver downloads available from Dell. It is always best to go to the manufacturer's website to get drivers.
     
  6. dirtfan50

    dirtfan50 Private First Class

    Dell Dimension 2400
    Xp home with service pack 3
    express code 80BL541
    Really the only problem I have is the display? It is on 16 bit and when I go to change it theres nothing to change. I have been to the dell web site and D/L some updates that I thought was for that but no luck.
     
  7. plodr

    plodr MajorGeek Super Extraordinaire Moderator Staff Member

    I have a Dimension 2400 running XP SP3 also.
    Let me see what display adapter it is using.
    There are 5 video files. We can cross out the first item because that doesn't have to do with your display.
    The other 4 files will depend on your motherboard. Only one of them would be the proper one to use.

    Download and run Belarc Advisor
    http://majorgeeks.com/Belarc_Advisor_d1385.html

    It might be able to pinpoint exactly which of the 4 is the correct one for you.

    If you aren't sure, post back - do not try to install something that might not be correct, otherwise you may end up with no video display rather than just poor video display.
     
  8. sach2

    sach2 Major Geek Extraordinaire


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