Being tech savvy in this day and age is a must. Keeping up with the best hardware available isn't. When you're on an extreme budget you have to work with what you have. In this case the proverbial 'what you have' is an Intel based GPU on an old computer. I decided to hit up Intel for a device driver update. They decided that after downloading for 4 hours (slow internet is soooo slow) that my driver could not be installed because a custom driver existed from the PC maker.

Subject:
Intel GPU (This one is a GMA 3100 on a G35 Express chipset)

Issue:
Dell OEM driver for Vista.
The driver provided by Dell is so out of date it would make baby Mr Rogers cry. After trying several (even older) drivers my problem persisted so I was stuck trying to finagle the generic Intel drivers into installing.

Solution:
I went into the device manager and right clicked on the adapter. I selected update driver. I then told it I wanted to browse my computer for drivers. I had made the mistake of downloading the .exe version of the freshest Intel driver so I had 7Zip open the executable as if it were an archive. I created a folder on my desktop and had 7Zip extract all the files to that folder. The first folder within the 'archive' had no name so I had to navigate inside it and then highlight and extract the files as a bunch. Then I told the driver update wizard I wanted a list of devices to choose from. It displayed some options but I clicked on HAVE DISK instead. (Just like I had to for practically every device I had to install on Windows 95.) Still using the update wizard I went to the folder on my desktop and found the .inf file for my display adapter inside a sub-folder named "Graphics". After that I click on OK. Windows gave me one option, so went with that, clicking next. After letting the install run, the computer asked for a restart. When Vista had finished reloading I checked my driver version and 'viola' done.

Intel's version of this work-around is here: [link]

I only used this AFTER every automated method had been exhausted. Figuring out Dell had not updated the driver, finding Intel's download of the driver installer and getting messages telling me to get the update from the manufacturer wasted 2 days of off and on attempts. In my case I had to use 7Zip as well to extract the drivers from the .exe file. Usually it's a bit more like Intel's work-around where you just download the.zip file instead.

Happy Installing.