Halp!! (again)

Ok, here's my situation:

recently, i reformatted my hard drive and did a clean installation of windows vista, erasing EVERYTHING off my hard drive (i though my computer had a virus or such, and had a lot of junk on my computer).

anyways, when i started it up for the first time, the resolution was set to 800X600. when i went to change it, there were only two settings: that, and 1024X768. I changed it to the latter, but everything looks stretched. and sometimes, it's not stretched, but the windows don't take up the whole screen, leaving a big black chunk on the right and bottom of my screen. I was talkin to a Fry's employee, and he said that it was a driver issue. That makes sense, seeing as when i open my device manager, there's apparently a problem opening the standard vga graphics adapter. my question is: how do i fix this? what driver to i need to update/install?? also, there are some other problems with three base system device drivers and a video controller driver. there's also a small issue of the non-recognition of my touchpad, but that may be fixed here soon. idk, though.

haha any info would be GREATLY appreciated...

 

When you reinstall Vista from scratch, you need to reinstall all your drivers to get all your hardware working properly. What exact model laptop do you have? If you to go www.support.dell.com, and click the "Drivers and Downloads" link, you can either enter your service tag or select your model from a list, and it will direct you to a page with all the device drivers and software utilities that your notebook uses. This includes your graphics driver and touchpad, and will take care of those unknown "system device" drivers.

If you can't find the page, post your model number and system specs here, or if you feel comfortable with it, send me your Service Tag in an email, which will make finding out what hardware you have a lot easier.

 

i've been there, and i downloaded the touchpad driver, but am confused as to exactly what drivers i actually need, because there are several drivers under the 'video' category.

i have an inspiron 1520. i think i need the one that's related to the GeForce graphics, but i'm not exactly sure...

 

sorry, forgot system specs.

intel T7250 (2.0GHz/800MHz/2MB L2 cache)|3GB (2GB + 1 GB) DDR2 ram|15.4" WXGA Matte|120GB 5400RPM SATA HDD|DVD+RW drive

 

Hold your Windows key and hit "R". This brings up the Run menu. Type "dxdiag", without the quotes, and hit enter. In the "Display" tab of the window that pops up, it will tell you exactly what graphics card you have.

 

Just enter the service tag of your laptop on dell's Driver downloads page and you'll only get the exact drivers for your model.