Video Card installation

[Gatorade Frost]

Hopefully this will be my last thread on this subject, but my video card on the first step says:

NOTE: Before installing your RADEON we recommend that you first uninstall the driver for your current video card and reconfigure your operating system to use the standard display driver (VGA) supplied with your operating system. For more information about changing to the VGA driver, see your operating system documentation

I was given instructions by a friend to do this:

This is how it should work - Right-click 'My Computer'
Select 'Properties'
There should be a tab for 'Hardware,' select that
Select 'Device Manager'
Select 'Display Adaptors'
Select your current video card and remove or delete it. At this point, it should remove the drivers
Shutdown and install the new one, or go as per the instructions.

Alright, I can do all of that, but I don't want to install the driver on my computer and lose my computer screen. When I do this will it revert it to the standard display driver (VGA)?

[madcow]

The changes won't be made until you reboot your system, don't worry. You screen won't go black as soon as you remove the video card from the list.

[Gatorade Frost]

Yeah, I should'nt have been such a worry wart about that because I knew that, but when I do that does it automatically revert the computer to the original VGA settings the next time it reboots? By that time I'll have my new card in and all, I'm just checking to make sure.

[Dragonlich]

Originally Posted by Gatorade Frost

Yeah, I should'nt have been such a worry wart about that because I knew that, but when I do that does it automatically revert the computer to the original VGA settings the next time it reboots? By that time I'll have my new card in and all, I'm just checking to make sure.

It'll go back to "generic VGA card" mode. After startup, Windows will find a new videocard, and will try to install drivers. Finding none, it'll ask for the a disk. This applies even if you keep the original videocard in there!

One possible problem (usuallt theoretical): your computer *may* refuse to work with the new drivers installed. I had that problem when moving from a Geforce to a Radeon. It worked fine with "generic drivers", but as soon as I installed the new drivers and rebooted, the computer would be r e a l l y slow. It took a fresh install to solve the problem. So... just make a backup of valuable data just in case. Then again, people should be doing that regularly anyway...