To update your DRIVERS for FREE I definitely suggest you try a stunning free tool called "DEVICE DOCTOR":

http://www.devicedoctor.com/

It works like a charm for me, much better than other commercial software, since it has found a couple of driver updates in my system that the shareware & award-winning DRIVER GENIUS PROFESSIONAL missed to show me.

As you can see from the developer's website there is also a portable version to install on your pendrive, enabling you to quickly scan any PC you use for driver updates without having to install anything on your computer (so no interaction with the Registry and the temporary file folders of your system), meaning that, once your pendrive is removed,  no "garbage" is left behind, except the Drivers update files you are asked to download of course....LOL!

The only drawback is that this tool doesn't create a restore point once you apply the DRIVERS UPDATES, so you have to remember to manually create it as precautionary measure before installing the driver updates.

However, since all DRIVER DOWNLOADS are FREE of charge and you can update as many of them as you want without any restriction, as instead occurs with other update tools such as DRIVER MAX, I can't see this as a big problem...what do you make of it??

After updating all your DRIVERS don't forget to make a full backup of them  using DRIVER MAX or better still DOUBLE DRIVER, an old Ashraf's "acquaintance": am I right, Ashraf??? LOL!!!

http://dottech.org/freewaresr/7225

Enjoy!!

Cheers from Italy!!

Giovanni, King of Freebies

So far no problems have shown up. I've still got to reinstall Cyberlink's PowerDirectior to see if it fixed my problem with that program tho.

karen said:

Looks like the right driver to me.

Thank you karen.

Wheezer said:

I'm start'n to think maybe there is something internally wrong with this computer, I just can't afford to replace it yet.

Hahahaha... This is a little off topic, but not really...

A couple hours after I made that last post, my brother knocks on my door. I let him in and he says "do you have any intrest in a free laptop computer?"

I said "sure." Out of his briefcase he pulls a gateway model 400VTX. Yup, it's old-er and so far, slower. But still, I've got 2 "puters" now. Both with about the same ram and such.

I spent the last few hours figuring out what it has on it for programs, installing CCleaner, Speccy, and was about to put Firefox on when I decided I've had enough of installing programs and messing with problems for today.

Running CCleaner made a big difference in it's speed. I'm looking forward to seeing what it's like after I install TuneUp Utilities 2009 and run that.

I figure if nothing else, at least I'll be able to split up the work I do between the 2 computers. Maybe the lighter workload will help them both run better.

I now return you to the original thread subject... 

I'm start'n to think maybe there is something internally wrong with this computer, I just can't afford to replace it yet.

amnesia said:It's getting late so I may be seeing things, but the version you already have is the same as the one you want to install.

That's what I thought at first too. But then noticed the date difference, which isn't much, but then again, maybe they made some changes in that time.  ???

The driver I have is dated 2/18/05, and the one I'm thinking about updating to is dated 6/3/05.

Karen: I did the google search as you suggested. That left me feeling overwhelmed, so went to the HP site (I have a Compaq Presario V2000, model #: V2311US).

After finding my computer on their list of drivers available, I see they have 2 conexant drivers listed. One is an "Audio" driver, the other is a "Modem." So I'm assuming I need the audio one since the Cyberlink guy said "update your VGA/Sound card driver."

I've downloaded the driver but haven't installed it yet. Yes, I'm scared of wrecking my computer again and having to do another reinstall of xp.

So what I'm gonna do is give a link to the page I downloaded the driver update from, and include in this reply info from the DirectX Diagnostic Tool report I ran. Hopefully somebody with more knowledge than me will look it over and offer their opinion on whether or not I downloaded the right update.

I'll wait a couple days (at least) to see if anyone replies before installing the update.

The DirectX Diagnostic Tool info, since I can't copy & paste it in this reply, I took a screen shot of it and have them in a photobucket account.

The onscreen results are at: http://i170.photobucket.com/al.....ndpage.png

When I saved the results to send to Cyberlink, I got a different looking layout with more (?) info. The screen shot of that is at: http://i170.photobucket.com/al.....notepa.png

The web page I downloaded the update from is: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizs.....nvOID=1098

I downloaded the "Conexant CX20468-31 AC97 Audio Driver and Audio Driver EQ" that's about 1/3 the way down the page.
 

If anybody could take a minute to look it all over and offer an opinion on if it's the right driver update for me, not only would I appreciate it more than I can say, I will also personally BBQ some fresh venison this summer and serve it to you, if you wanna drive to North Dakota... 

Or try going straight to the pc manufacturer's website and and look for driver updates there.

Plus, I won't be able to get some programs again because they were from giveaway of the day or some other time limited offer.

This experience has given me motivation to try again to make one of the many drive image programs work on my computer again. Last time I couldn't make any of them work, kept running into error messages. So eventually gave up. Time to try again.

One thing that has taken some of the pain out of this whole thing is knowing that at least I got a bunch of the programs I had from articles that were here on dottech. It'll take a bit of searching, but I should be able to get those back anyway. (Thank you Ashraf!)

It just sucks that I'll probably end up still having the driver that needs updating...

Sorry, but I am VERY biased against driver software, as they have REALLY screwed up my PC before.