Ok I have no idea what I'm doing. My laptop is a bit old and has some minor (mostly annoying delays) when playing some videos. To watch streaming ball games from mlb.tv or to watch TV/Movies I've downloaded I have to switch screen solution from 1280 x 1024 to 1024 x 768 so it will play more smoothly. I was thinking since I know there is no way to upgrade the hardware, maybe I can upgrade/update the drivers. I figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to make the video drivers as up to date as possible. I found a site driverguide.com (pain to join, but seems to be helpful) and did a search for S3 graphic twister and found a driver that claims to be the most up to date. " TwisterS3Graphics13.94.12Hotkey5-26-03.zip " I DL'ed it already but have not installed it. I'm not sure if I should. I didn't know much about these types of things. I don't want to screw up my laptop. So I guess my questions are:
* Should I even bother to install this update?
* How do I determine what my current driver info is?
* How do I install/update my driver from the file I DL'ed?
* How risky is this idea?

Thanks for your help!

It never hurts to try! It's pretty simple actually. The installation is like installing anything, like a program, on your computer.

First, it would be a good idea to uninstall the old driver's in add/remove programs then delete the folder's. After this you should restart your computer. When it comes back on the screen resolution will be every messed up, and windows will try to get you to install some generic driver's, say no to anything that pops ups.

After this install the new driver's and it should tell you to restart your computer again. This time when it turns on, the screen resolution should look normal. Thats it! Hope this was helpful and fixes your problem!

In a nutshell, that's it (nice Sterling14!). The only thing I'd do differently is say that it's ALWAYS a good idea to uninstall your old drivers first, and to always have that version (current version that you know works) downloaded some place so that if you have problems with the newer drivers, you can uninstall them and install the previous ones that worked.

You'll also have to adjust your resolution manually (more often than not) as it might default to a lower setting than what you had. Newer drivers may or may not help. If anything, I should think they'd help speed things up a bit, but you never know!

Well I did it! Not sure if it made a difference. I should have noted the date of issue for the last driver. All I can say is it seems to be running better. This might sound funny, but I've been having a hell of a time with my mouse. it stutters across the screen a lot. Since this new driver instal it seems to work BETTER! Thanks guy for your help!

Not a problem! Since it's an older computer, you might want to take extra steps to ensure that it's free of malware, is defragged often and has very little programs running at start up! All of this will help to keep your computer running not only smoother, but faster too!