Newbie Needs Help Fixing Drivers

Hello everybody. I'm a daily visitor to the NBR reviews and forums. I own an Asus G1S with an 8600mGT 256mb@DDR3 and like it very much, but I have never fiddled with the graphics card before. After experiencing "could-be-better" performance in Crysis (around 22FPS at all times @ 1280x800 all settings medium), I decided I would look into updating my drivers.

At the moment, I only know how to use DXDiagnostic to find driver information. This is what it says:

Main Driver: nvd3dum.dll
Version: 7.15.0011.0108 (English)
Date: 04/04/2007 7:40:59 AM
WHQL Logo'd: Yes
DDI Version: 9Ex

I cannot begin to understand what all this means, but that's what's listed.

I have a few questions about the driver-upgrading process:

1. What is a driver? From what I understand, it's the script telling the GPU how to function. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

2. Where can I find new drivers? Point me to a link if possible, please. If it's not obvious on the linked page I can guarantee you I'll miss it, so instructions could be added as well.

3. Are drivers anything like other "extract and run" files downloaded from the Internet? If so, where do I extract them to? If not, OH GOD. I hate to burden you guys, but could anyone provide noob-friendly instructions on how to install a new driver?

4. What other steps need to be taken that I might not have thought of? Pretty much all I'm going to do after installing the driver is reboot the computer and log into CSS to test it out. What other steps should I follow for proper installation, or is it actually that simple?

THANK YOU, EVERYONE!
Batman

PS: I might check back in at a later date with questions about overclocking my GPU... I've heard it produces noticeable results. I won't be back for that until I feel it's necessary though. <3

 

if you go to the games and graphics card forum, i believe there is a sticky there and that has all of the details you need
here

 

Well, as expected, I hit a bump in the road... I downloaded driver 169.04 and tried to follow Chaz's steps: download, uninstall old, reboot, install new, reboot. I started to install the new ones and after it extracted the files and started the install wizard, it told me that "the nVIDIA setup program could not locate any drivers that are compatible with your current hardware. Setup will now exit."

I had checked online to make sure this was a good 8600mGT 32-bit Vista driver!

garr. What went wrong, and how can I fix it? Google SketchUp and Counter-Strike: Source are now both completely unusable.

 

To update my struggle: I've been following a guide from one of the lead moderators at laptopvideo2go about how to use their modded INF files and stuff...
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=11997

Check it out, it's really well done. However, when I follow the steps precisely, I see my first difference from his screenshots in Scrnshot 6, when his Standard VGA Graphics Adapter's logo has a yellow triangle and mine does not. Then, when I try to update the driver using the modded INF on my desktop, as he does, it tells me that the best driver available is already installed... even though in the "Uninstall/Change a Program" page there are no drivers listed.

What is going on?

 

I ran into the same problem with my G1S. The icon never turned yellow and it kept telling me that the drivers were up to date. Hopefully someone has a solution for this.

 

That's a bit weird. Be sure to use DriverCleanerPro or smth similar to clean up remnants of old drivers in safe mode, after you uninstall them.

You can I think force the LaptopVideo2Go drivers to install even though the computer may think that it has newer drivers installed. There should be an option to do that, when you use the Have Disk method.

Otherwise, you can try also removing the Standard VGA drivers, and installing the modded drivers just after that, before Windows has any chance of installing them again.