Dear Jeff,
Thanks for yours, which I didn’t really understand. However,
"drivers" rang a bell, I must have noticed something on an earlier
search, so……….
Via Start/Control Panel/Printers & Hardware, where clicked on System,
the following wording comes up under System
Properties/Hardware/Drivers:
Driver Signing lets you make sure that installed drivers are
compatible with Windows.
Windows Update lets you set up how Windows connects to Windows Update
for drivers.
I haven’t clicked on either, but is that the right area?
My computer was “put together†by a friend, System Properties
states under General that it is an Intel Pentium III processor 733
MHz, 256 MB of RAM. Trust that makes sense.
I don’t appear to have a CD or a graphics card (or I might if I
knew what it was)
Sorry, I sound (and I guess I am) absolutely clueless.
One syllable words please…………….
Regards,
Sheila
Hi Sheila
A graphics card is just a piece of hardware that takes the information
from the computer and converts it into a signal that your monitor can
display. Sometimes it is a separate card that plugs inside the computer
and sometimes it's actually built into the main circuit board of the
computer (known as the main board, motheboard or mobo).
A driver is a piece of software that 'tells' the computer how to 'talk'
to the graphics card.
In an ideal world we wouldn't need to know or care about either but
when things go wrong unfortunately we have to get our hands dirty
I think that the driver for your graphics card has somehow become
corrupted by the installation of SP2 and so needs to be installed
again. Of course I may be wrong!
You could ask the friend who put your PC together what sort of graphics
card it has, or if you want to check for yourself you can do the
following:
Open Control Panel
Click on 'Printers and Other Hardware'
On the left is a panel that says 'See Also'
Click on 'System' which is at the bottom of that panel
A dialog box will open which contains a lot of information about your
system.
Click on the tab at the top that says 'Hardware'
Click on the button that says 'Device Manager'
You can now see a list of all the hardware in your computer - it's
worth just scanning down it. If there is a problem there will be a red
blob or yellow blob next to the problem item (if there are any make a
note of what they are and let us know)
If you now click on the '+' next to 'Display adapters' the list will
expand slightly and you can see what sort of graphics adapter you have.
Make a note of the graphics adapter full name (e.g. mine says Matrox
Millennium G400 Dualhead Max)
Click 'Cancel' on each dialog you have opened, that will close each one
without changing anything
Come back with the name of the adapter and the model and we can sort
out what drivers you need and where best to get them.
Also let us know of any items with red/yellow blobs next to the