Very often, many users of computers and laptops are faced with a rather unpleasant situation when, after reinstalling the operating system, discrete graphics accelerators installed directly on the motherboard disappear from the list of equipment presented in the “Device Manager”. At the same time, instead of his own video card, the user sees some kind of video controller (VGA-compatible), which is marked with a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark, which indicates that the driver for it is not installed. It also happens that the device does not seem to be marked as a device without a driver, however, when starting the same games serious problems begin, because they do not determine the required graphics adapter in the system. Why this happens and what actions can be taken in such a situation, we will discuss further.
What is a video controller (VGA-compatible) in the “Device Manager”?
To begin with, such a device, displayed in the list of equipment of the “Device Manager”, relates to a non-working graphic adapter only indirectly. The system simply defines the video card not as equipment on board, but as a kind of virtual adapter. Sometimes it is possible to guess that this is an “iron” card by the fact that it is often indicated that it is a PCI-video controller (VGA-compatible). The PCI slot on the motherboard just serves to install the graphics adapter. But, again, the operating system sees it exclusively as a virtual controller. Why?
Why is the wrong driver installed?
The problem of incorrect driver installation is most often due to the fact that it does not find the necessary control software for the graphics adapter in its own Windows database (if anyone does not know that during the initial installation and during the repeated installation, it uses exclusively its own driver databases).
Another very common situation is that when reinstalling the system without formatting the system partition, the new installed OS may inherit the errors of the old one, in which the drivers of the graphics adapter were not completely removed. Because of this, conflicts arise, and Windows itself installs the most suitable driver (as it seems to it), which is completely unsuitable for the functioning of the video card. True, there are cases when the name of the video card seems to be displayed, but still, the system shows that a driver is installed that is not present in the system card, namely a VGA-compatible video controller (NVIDIA, for example). For GeForce series devices, the reason lies precisely in the fact that outdated drivers have not been completely removed.
How to reinstall the driver for a VGA-compatible video controller in the simplest way?
Despite such conflicts, the situation can be rectified quite simply.
First of all, in the “Device Manager” select the VGA-compatible video controller in the list, and then select the driver update item through the PCM menu, then tell the system to search for updated drivers. If this does not help, it is quite possible that the driver will be rolled back (only if the corresponding button in the adapter properties section is active).
If this does not work, just remove the device from the system and see how correctly the graphics adapter will be detected after this (in some cases this happens instantly, and sometimes it may be necessary to reboot the system).
The use of automated programs and databases
In the case of discrete graphics chips, you can use the driver disk, which was supplied when they were purchased. Also, a good solution to the problem is to visit the official website of the manufacturer, where you can find the latest software by the model of the video card.
For NVIDIA and ATI adapters, manufacturers very often provide additional programs that also allow for installation or upgrade (for example, NVIDIA Experience). If their application does not work, try using automated programs like DriverPack Solution or Driver Booster. The first utility contains its own database, which is much larger than the one that uses Windows. And both update applications can access the official resources of manufacturers via the Internet to download and install updates. You can also use some informative utilities.
For example, in the popular Everest program, when viewing information about image output devices for a video card, you can also download drivers.
What to do if the driver cannot be found?
If none of the above helped, but the VGA-compatible video controller is still on the list of graphic devices, use the “Device Manager”, in the PCM menu, open its properties section, go to the information tab, select the equipment ID from the drop-down list, copy or write down the longest line with the identifiers DEV and VEN, then use it to search for a driver on the Internet, download the software and install it yourself.
Note: if an error is reported when installing the found driver, you will have to uninstall all the drivers manually. To do this, perform an analysis in the Driver Sweeper program, delete all the elements found, go to the registry (regedit), search for the keys by the name of the video card manufacturer, delete everything that is found, restart the computer and try to install the drivers again. Sometimes the problem may be related to PhysX components, so it is possible that you will have to remove them as well.