HOW TO: Update your sound card drivers

Updating your sound card can be very easy, and sometimes very hard especially when you don't know what sound card you have. Hopefully, this article will help you update your sound card no matter what problems you encounter.

To start off, lets figure out what your sound card is, ok?

1) Right click My Computer - Manage
2) Open Device Manager in the left window pane
3) Open Sound, Video, and game controllers

Here you can see multiple devices, or maybe none at all! So how do you determine which is yours?
If you go to your volume control - right click - view playback devices, you should see the default playback sound input have a big green check

(Skip the below step if your sound card is detected)
But what if my sound card isn't detected in device manager you may ask
Well, luckily, I have this program called everesthome, this program can detect all kinds of hardware that device manager, doesn't have implemented yet, sadly. Download the program and install it

1) Launch Everest Home > Multimedia - Now scour through the tree to find your sound card, hopefully its something you recognize,

Another way to find your sound card is to open up your PC case and look at sound card directly, if you still can't find it or its integrated check your motherboard manual it should tell you what sound card is in there.

Now you know your sound card name so now its time for some updating
If you don't have a well known card such as creative, finding your sound card can be difficult especially if you have the integrated intel cards. Updating should be fairly easy to do, as long as you find your card.

1) Go to google.com
2) Type in your soundcardname + drivers + downloads (example creative sound blaster x-fi + drivers + downloads)
Hopefully the first link will be the model of your sound card and something related to driver updates
3) Dowload the correct drivers for your operating system and run the executable (In vista run as administrator)
4) Now, to see if your sound card is successfully updated, go back into device manager and right click on your sound card and go to properties, then check the driver tab for the correct date! If it is fairly new, congratulations you have updated your sound card!

HOW TO: Update your video card!

Video card manufacturers release driver updates every now and then, such as nvidia.com or ati.com, which are the most commonly used video cards on the market. Along with the video card are drivers, updating your drivers can be very useful to improve performance, updates can include tweaks, fixes, optimization, and even added support to video games. Sometimes, updating drivers can be a very bothering task, especially if you don't know what kind of video card you have. I will teach you how!

First: Figure out what your card is!
1. Press start
2. If you are using vista, go to step 3, if you are using an OS older than vista, click run
3. Type in dxdiag

Now the Directx diagnostic tool will appear
There is a lot of information in this screen, what we want is the driver name and the driver date,

4. Click Display 1
5. Write down the Name of the card, (example mine says ATI Radeon HD 4800 SERIES)
6. The Date of the driver is on the right, (mine says 5/15/2009), if it is fairly new to the recent update, you don't have to update, but still it is advisable to do so!
7. Now if it is an nvidia.com or ati.com you are in luck! Click on the corresponding sites and fill in the correct information from your Driver name,( you can find out your OS by double clicking on My Computer)
8. Download those drivers and run the installer!

Now what if my driver name is not ati or nvidia you may ask,

Well, this can be solved, you wrote down your driver name right? Good!
1. Go to google.com.
Pick option A or B for step 2
2a. Type in your driver name and then type + driver, example (ATI Radeon HD 4800 SERIES + updates), this will shorten your search to include driver + your card, this is very useful finding it.
2b. Type in the manufacturers website into site + driver name + (driver downloads): (example site:intel.com + intel GMA 950 + driver downloads), this will shorten your list to your download, hopefully
3. Now the site you need to pick is hopefully your manufacturer, intel.com etc,
4. Click on the site, look for the download link for your OS and install those drivers!

Is this article useful? Are you still have problems? Please comment them! I will be glad to assist you

jlluitj

HOW TO: Make your firefox faster with Tweak Network

Lets start off today by making your firefox a little faster so you can view my blog even faster! How wonderful is that!

Tweak Network
Click here to install this addon.

Restart firefox
Tools > Tweak Network Settings > Start off by changing max connections: 45-55 , max connections per server 20, max persistant connections 8-10, max persistant connections per proxy, 8-10, enable pipelining, and put the pipelining maxrequests to 8-10, press apply and hit ok!

OR

if your feeling good enough, just press power, hit apply then hit ok.
You can always change the settings even higher but be careful and try not to destroy your network :P

Thats all and enjoy!

jlluitj