Dell 1530, got some driver questions, very new to this thanks

Can someone explain these drivers everyone are talking about? I'm quite new to notebooks and I don't think I updated drivers on this old PC. I had some questions about this.


1. What are these drivers updating? hardware? software? vista?

2. How do I check which driver I currently have? (Have vista)

3. Can I get a link on where I download them?

4. whats the difference between a beta driver and an offical driver and which is better?

5. I went to the dell webpage and I couldn't find these drivers anyone are talkinga bout, can someone direct me or give me a link to it?

6. What drivers will my 1530 come with when it gets here on monday

7. whats the difference between the drivers at laptopvideo2go and the offical ones from dell (couldnt find it on webpage)


thanks guys

 

Drivers are software that controls/run physical hardware. i.e. pretty much every component of your laptop or pc has a driver.

You can check on driver versions by looking in device manager

They are easily available from the dell website, although for more updated versions you can often go direct to the component manufcturers website.

http://support.dell.com/

The m1530 comes with fairly recent drivers for most of its components, the only drivers i have changed so far are the Video card and fingerprint reader.

The drivers at laptop2go are specifically for the video component and are new realises from nvidia. As it stands dell ship with forceware 156.63 while nvidia are upto 174.70 or so. Dell like to test drivers before making it available on the dell website.

 

ty, need more feedback on this please.

btw whats forceware and I couldn't find the drivers link, can you show me a link that will show the nvidia video card driver? and where in device manager, what am I looking for?


appreciate all the help

 

forceware is the name of the nvidia drivers.

just follow the link I gave above, and follow the search for drivers link, once you select you model it will give you a list of all drivers for that model.

In device manager you have to right click select properties on a piece of hardware and look in the drivers tab.

I think you need to do some background reading as you are asking some pretty basic questions. Until you understand what you are changing you might be better leaving the drivers alone.

 

thanks MC1 you been very helpful I appreciate it. Can you tell me where in the del site it has my driver for my GPU? I only see drivers for like my ethernet card, audio drivers etc...... nothing on my "Nvidia" driver. And whats the difference from the drivers from laptop2go vs dell site vs nvidia offical webpage. Thanks this is the last questions I got!

 

The gpu drivers are under video.

nvidia update their driver regularly, although not all versions will be stable. laptop gpu drivers tend to be restricted to certain maufacturers (depends on arrangement laptop maker has with gpu maker). laptop2go provide modded *.inf files that allow drivers to be installed on any computer.

Dell update their drivers periodically chosing a stable and tested version to release.