update my graphics drivers

Update My Video Drivers

Most crashes of desktop video games are caused by outdated video card / graphics card drivers. This problem can be fixed easily and for free! UpdateMyVideoDrivers.com was made to help you update your drivers as quickly and easily as possible.

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Microsoft Windows Update my video drivers on Microsoft Windows

Update my video drivers on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10

Find out what company makes your Graphics Card

  1. In Windows 10: Right-click on the Start button in the bottom-left of the screen and choose "Run" from the menu. In the box that pops up, type "dxdiag" (don't type the quotes) and press Enter. Continue to step 2.

    In Windows 8: If you're using Metro mode (the "tiles" view that looks like a tablet), then click the Search icon (it's a magnifying glass in the top right corner) and type "dxdiag" (don't type the quotes), hit Enter, then Continue to Step 2. If you're using Desktop mode, follow the instructions below for Windows 7 and Windows Vista: it will be the same for you.

    In Windows 10, Windows 7, or Windows Vista: Click the Start button (or press the Windows key on your keyboard, usally found somewhere to the left of the spacebar). Type "dxdiag" in the Search box and press Enter.

    NOTE: If you get a popup message that says "Do you want to allow DxDiag to check if your drivers are digitally signed?" then click "Yes" if you currently have a working internet connection, and click "No" otherwise.

  2. The 'DirectX Diagnostic Tool' will open. Click the Display tab.

  3. Look for the Name field and Manufacturer field. This will show you what brand and model of video card (graphics card) you have.

Download & Install a driver from the graphics-card-maker's website

Go to the website of the manufacturer of your video card (graphics card) to download the most up-to-date drivers. Here are links to the driver pages for the most popular manufacturers:

NOTE: If you are trying to find the right download and they ask you whether your computer is 32-bit or 64-bit and you're not sure, find out if you're running 32-bit Windows or 64-bit of Windows.

Update my video drivers on Windows XP

Easy Way

It's worth trying this first:
  1. Right-click on your Desktop which should open a menu
  2. Select Properties from the menu
  3. Select the Settings tab
  4. Click the Advanced button
  5. Select the Adapter tab
  6. Click the Properties button
  7. A new window will pop up. Select the Driver tab
  8. There will be some buttons on the left side of this dialog. If the Update Driver... button is clickable, then click that to start the upgrade process. If it is not clickable, then the computer couldn't find any available updates. If you're stuck and you still want to manually look for an upgrade, read the next section called "If the Easy Way doesn't work".

If the Easy Way doesn't work

In some cases, the system won't be able to find an Update the other way, but you may still want to try to update your drivers on your own.

The manual method requires two steps: 1) finding out which type of graphics card you have and 2) downloading the drivers from the manufacturer's website. For detailed instructions on how to do those steps, just follow the instructions for Windows Vista above.

Mac OSX Update my video drivers on Mac OSX

On Mac OSX, the drivers are part of OS X, so they are updated automatically when you do a Mac update. Make sure you have the newest version of the operation system.

Here's how to make sure you have the latest updates installed:

  1. Click the Apple logo near the top left of the screen.
  2. The above step will open a menu, select "Software Updates" from the menu.
  3. NOTE: If you do not see "Software Updates" then you might have automatic updates turned on. If that's the case, then choose "System Preferences" instead. Then click the "App Store" logo and "Check Now" button.
  4. If there is a software update available, install that... it will contain any updates that are currently available for your graphics drivers.

Linux Update my video drivers on Linux

It is strongly recommended to use the commercial (usually closed-source) drivers that are provided by your graphics card's manufacturer, unless you really want to Rage Against the Machine. The first set of instructions will be tailored to the normal update. If you are hardcore, we'll cover that later.

Possible shortcut for Fedora users

You can follow the instructions on this page for a potentially easy-fix. If that doesn't work, then just try the normal instructions below.

Determine which graphics card you have installed

  1. Find the type of graphics card by typing lspci | grep VGA on the command-line.
  2. Then, find the current version of the graphics card by typing glxinfo | grep OpenGL

Download & install the appropriate driver

Based on the type of graphics card that you found in the previous step, download the video drivers from the appropriate site:

Update my video drivers on Ubuntu

Updating existing drivers (most common)

In Ubuntu, the updates are handled automatically by the Update Manager, but it's possible that the manager has not checked for updates in a while and you want to make sure you have the most recent update.

In case an update is already available but hasn't been installed yet:
  1. Click the gear icon on the very top-right corner of the screen
  2. If an option that says Update Available is there, then click that to start installing the updates
To force a check for updates:
  1. Open the Update Manager (to do this: click the unity symbol (the Ubuntu logo) on the dock and type Update Manager)
  2. Click the Check button to check if any new updates are available
  3. Click the Install Updates button to start the install
  4. Restart your computer to begin using the updated video drivers
If you use Steam on Linux, there are additional instructions on the Ubuntu wiki if you run into any problems.

Installing new video drivers (eg: if you just got a new graphics card)

  1. Click the unity symbol (the Ubuntu logo) on the dock/task-bar and type Additional Drivers.
  2. Open the Additional Drivers application.
  3. This application should automatically detect if you have new hardware that needs drivers and will guide you through the rest of the process.

Conclusion

This site was made by BlueLine Game Studios because we noticed that most users who were unable to run our Steam games (PC, Mac,and Linux) just needed to get a quick update to their video drivers. This is very common for all Game Developers making cross-platform games on Steam... yet there was no single site that we could point users to, when it was clear that they needed to update their drivers. It felt wrong to cast the user off on their own to search based on their specific computer type (which often resulted in pages with intimidating instructions), so we built this free site!

In building this site, we pulled together info from a bunch of sources & used a few open source tools. The browser-detection is done using WhichBrowser. The site's icon & favicon are from the open-source (GPL) Nuvola icon-set. At least some of the icons for the operating systems come from Tatice, licensed under by-nc-nd 3.0. We compiled info about the various operating systems from a number of sources. Beyond what is already directly-linked to above, we used sketchup, some windows info from Adobe, some Windows XP and Linux info from UCSF, as well as some Ubuntu/Steam info from Valve.