John said:
Would you suggest that I should forget about trying to update my
driver?
Yes, if you aren't having any problem and if the new driver is refusing
to install why bother? Keeping on trying to install the driver might
cause more damage than what it's worth! If you really want to install
the driver then you should check the support site for your display
adapter or contact them and see what they have to say. The only other
thing that I can suggest is to make sure that you have downloaded the
proper driver for your adapter and operating system.
By and large driver updates don't usually add new features to your
devices, they might just be released to work with features on newer
devices yet be compatible with older devices. Many display adapters use
the same driver for a certain series, for example you might have a
certain 9600 XYZ adapter and this year the company introduced a new 9650
XYZ adapter with a few new features and at the same time they released
new drivers for the features on the new adapter. Manufacturers don't
like to have too many different drivers, too much trouble trying to
maintain too many drivers, it's inefficient for their business, so they
only publish one set of drivers for a certain series of devices. You
can update your drivers if you want, but if all that the drivers do is
allow the newer 9650 XYZ adapter to run features that your 9600 XYZ
adapter doesn't have then they will do absolutely nothing for your
adapter. Sometimes the drivers are not fully regression tested for all
software/hardware combinations for the older product and the new driver
might even cause problems with the older adapter. Or the newer driver
might have a yet unknown bug that will later cause problems, for
example, not too long ago there was a series of newer ATI Catalyst
drivers that were found to be buggy and for a while a lot of folks who
had installed the new drivers were having a lot of problems and their
only recourse was to roll back the drivers to an older version. Users
on ATI forums and other help sites were told to wait and *not* to
install the newer drivers if they had certain series of adapters.
Another reason why newer drivers might be released is to address
specific issues that might not even exist on your computer. For example
a certain combination of hardware might cause problems, or a certain CAD
software program might have specific problems with the display adapter.
These issues might not even affect you at all, you should read the
release notes for the driver and find out what's new with the drivers.
Most of the time it doesn't hurt anything to install new drivers, but a
lot of the time it also does nothing to improve anything on your
computer. If you aren't having any problems with your computer why
bother with buggy drivers that don't want to install and that may
ultimately bug up your computer? There are times when it is best to
leave well enough alone, I think that in your case this is one of these
times.
John
