NVIDIA Driver Updating Question

Hey all!

Forgive my noobness on this question, but I haven't had to really update display drivers before. My question is: I am currently running an older driver from 2004 for my NVIDIA Geforce2 MX/MX 400 card and was looking to update to the latest stable version. Is it safe to use the drivers from NVIDIA's website http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp, Graphics Driver>Geforce 2> Win XP/2K, even though my specific one isn't listed there really (MX/MX 400)? If it is, then that part of my question is answered. Two, I read on the thread http://forums.windrivers.com/showthread.php?t=73045 to use Driver Cleaner professional before installing new drivers. Is it the right thing to do to uninstall the outdated drivers then install the new one I have downloaded, or is there no need to do this step? If there is, will my display still work even after I uninstalled the driver temporarily and am installing the new one? Sorry for all the questions guys, I just wanted to do this right! Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me out! -Phrozen

OK,

Nvidia make a single driver package for most of their products.
Nvidia release driver updates all the time
Driver updates are only necessary if you have a problem with the video card (say in a game or something)
Driver updates are tied to the directx version you are running
Video cards are made to cope with a certain version of directx
Older video cards can run newer versions of directx and drivers because backwards compatibility is built in (but sometimes doesn't work).
Games and software make use of directx and some are unable to make use of newer or older versions despite the efforts of the driver and directx programmers.

So my question to you is, why are you updating the video drivers?

Well, I was wishing to update them because at random times during start up I notice that my screen is very garbled and everything is blurred, but after I let it boot up fully, then do a restart it is usually alright. I was thinking perhaps a driver update would solve that completely so I wouldn't have to wait to do a full system restart. Perhaps it may just be the video card itself acting up? After looking at it closely I saw the fan on it wasn't looking so great, but it still functions. Any ideas? Or should I go ahead with a driver update to see if that works? -Phrozen

It's generally a good thing to have up-to-date video drivers, but your problem sounds to me more like something with hardware. On a computer having cold boot video problems, which then clear up with a warm re-boot, I'd inspect the mainboard for any distressed capacitors (bulging, cracked, leaking), remove and re-seat the video card in case contacts have tarnished, and if possible try a known good PSU. If none of these seemed to be contributing to the problem, then I'd probably make sure current drivers were correctly installed, and if possible try a substitution of the video card in case it is struggling in some way.

Thanks for the reply Platypus. I already have physically taken the video card out and cleaned in and around the connectors and did notice a little bit of dust build up. I also checked the motherboard for some of the things you listed like a buldging capacitor, but didn't really find anything out of the ordinary. The garbled text now only appears very infrequently upon a cold start up. I do notice that when this problem does happen, once the screen reaches my desktop I notice a popup error message coming from a red circular icon in my taskbar, but I am unable to read it as it's to blurry; I was only able to make out the word 'display' in it. Once I do a system restart everything appears to be running fine, so maybe I will update my drivers, because as you said it's never a bad thing to do that. To do that would I just download the driver package listed on the NVIDIA website for my card and install it, without having to do anything else? Thanks again, Platypus. -Phrozen

Yes the nVidia driver package should be all you need to run to update the driver.

Phrozen, I would think this is less likely to be a driver issue, as such, than a problem with other things in your system. By all means, I'd update the driver and see what happens, but you might need to run more diagnostics.

The first thing I'd do is run a couple of decent malware removal tools like Ad Aware SE Personal and Spybot Search and Destroy. I would also open the Control Panel, go to Administrative Tools, open the Event Viewer, and look in the Applications and System log for any red X's

Since the error seems to be intermittent, I would suspect a hardware issue like a failing motherboard or memory, but you need to run several basic system tests first if the driver update doesn't fix the problem.