Updating laptop gfx drivers

[kenshindono]

hey guys, this may be a dumb question but i've never updated a laptops graphic card drivers before. I usually dont use premade comps either, but i had no intention of putting together a laptop. Anyway, i got a dell XPS m1710 a few years back. I love the thing, but have never bothered updating the drivers for anything. I think i want to update the graphic card drivers because Im going on vacation and just picked up the witcher, which i should update for

anyway this particular notebook has the geforce go 7950 gtx graphic card in it. The thing is im not really sure if you need to do anything special to update this. With a regular computer i would just uninstall the video drivers in device manager then install the new ones from scratch.

is it the same idea with a laptop or do you do anything different? Also, a bigger question, Dell uses its premade package junk, which i dont know if just uninstalling the graphic driver then slapping a new one in will cause problems. Will it?

another question is where should i get the driver? from Nvidia or dells website? dell shows this

http/support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R180916&SystemID=XPS_M1710&servicetag=&os=WW1&osl=en&deviceid=13188&devlib=0&typecnt=0&vercnt=5&catid=6&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=6&fileid=246678

which is from 2008, a whole year old

nvidia shows
http/www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_notebook_winxp_179.48_beta.html

which is a month old, but a beta driver it seems, yuck, i dont want a beta, maybe i can find whatever the last one is somewhere? But I dont see any older versions up on nvidias site =(

which one should i use? and how exactly should it be installed?

Lol i feel like a noob asking this but like i said, this is different from a regular gfx driver update and i want to make sure i dont screw it up, 2 things ive never screwed with, laptops and dell machines >_<

 

[frozenlead]

Same procedure as a desktop for the update.

Use the nvidia driver first, else use a driver from laptopvideo2go.com

 

[lostandwandering]

I uninstall my laptop drivers just like I do on a desktop.

There is a site called laptopvideo2go.com that takes desktop drivers and hacks them for mobile cards and they usually work pretty well. I'm using a set of them now on my laptop.

Here is a driver set released by Dell that supports your card: http/www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=22695

 

[kenshindono]

hmm tnx.. im not big on using either a beta or hacked driver though, i want the laptop to stay as stable as possible

looking at that laptopvideo site and the link in specific you gave me im a bit confused. is that a hacked driver or an offical one from dell? It seems theyre all custom drivers of some sort. Its about 10 months older than the one on dells site but if its just some hacked version i think i may want to just go with the more stable one for now


if thats the case and i do go for dell, should i just do it the desktop way like you did with these other ones? I glanced at dells site and it seems it has some executable or something that you run instead of just pointing the new driver thing to the folder its in

 

[kenshindono]

ungh, well, tried the dell drivers. It looks like you cant really just uninstall then manually install, as soon as you restart it auto installs the original dell drivers it had. The only way i could do it was just running the exe =( i really hope it totally removed the old drivers on its own and this doesn't cause me problems down the line

still, id like to know the answer to the question above about that site being all just hacked drivers or what

 

[frozenlead]

I can personally attest that those hacked drivers are excellent and rock-solid.

 

[kenshindono]

well maybe i'll give them a shot if i cant figure out the problem i posted below in the thread about using monitors with your laptop. that was one of the things i was hoping to fix with the new drivers but no luck =P