Crashing: I Want to Be Sure my Graphic Drivers are Current

I have a 6130HS-20

My computer crashes so frequently these days. Hard crashes. I'm hoping it's a problem with the Graphics Drivers/Adapter. Everytime I run Google Earth, I get a hard crash. When my wife plays pogo online (flash) games for very long, we get a hard crash. In fact, we also get a hard crash when we're just browsing the web.

We just bought a cooling fan pad to go under the unit, so I don't think heat is the problem any more. That's what we thought at first.

But I know I want updated graphics drivers, so I think I'll go down that road next.

I think I have the updated ATI drivers.
Can someone tell me how to check to see what I have, and also tell me what are the most current?

I've heard about Omega drivers, but don't know enough to know if I need them or not.

 

Use the Omega Drivers. I find they are more stable then ATI's own drivers. Buy a 1 gig stick of ram to boost performance and stability.

 

Go with the Omega drivers. In the fall of 05 averatec released new ATI drivers on their website and I installed them, only to find all of the original freezing and crashing problems had come back. Then I installed the newest Omega drivers again and everything was fine.

 

Omega sounds like the way to go. Where do I get them?

 

www.omegadrivers.net

 

Okay, got the drivers and installed them. Is there anything else I need to do?

The computer has crashed a few times -- like it was doing with the ATI Drivers. So I'm not so sure the problem has been fixed.

I went to Google Earth and moved around, and did some things that I was sure would have crashed the old setup. But then, I played a java game online and it crashed... hard (like it has been).

Are there settings I can mess with?
I really want to keep these hard crashes from happening.

Thanks for the help so far.

 

Also, it crashed once right after I started windows. I had just logged in and it was probably right when everything was initiating, you know, when your systray gets populated. The Start menu expanded, as if I had clicked on it, and then the computer shut down/crashed.

It was doing that before, with the ATI drivers.

Does that look familiar to anyone?

 

ok. Well, I think it's just the heat. It may have been the graphics driver when dealing with Google Earth, but I'm thinking it's the heat when dealing with all the rest.

I had posted a message,and then it really started going down hill. It was doing the crash-right-after-login thing and kept doing it. I think that's just because it was too hot.

Now why it's too hot now, and wasn't when we first got the computer, I don't know.

But i've taken off the back panel and have the laptop sitting directly on the cooling pad, and so far all is well.

so what can I do to fix it so I don't have to have the back panel off all the time?

+ one said to upgrade the ram
+ I could do that Arctic Silver thing

what else? Those don't seem to be strong fixes.

 

heres one thing to check, without the cooling pad, does the cpu fan work?
Then that would be why it was overheating so fast.
Otherwise i would have thought it to be a faulty ram chip.