Intel graphics card not recognised on steam - causing in game instability and video errors.

[HolyCows2000]

Product: HP Pavilion p6-2022uk

Graphics: Intel(R) HD Graphics 2000

Error Message in Steam: Unknown Video Card

I've been having problems playing a number of games on my new computer - this can cause relatively inocuous and easily fixable problems like the wrong screen resolution being used. Sometimes it causes the screen to be incorrectly aligned causing black strips along the side(s) of the screen. Games also crash a lot. One particular problem I had playing my old game Half Life 2 was that the video had what I think is called the "grey fog" problem where all the graphics in the game is extremely bright - as though someone had turned on an extremely harsh high wattage light bulb which washes out all the graphics. I also get this error message in Steam which says they cannot recognise my graphics card, or don't have anything like it on their database. Do I need to download different drivers for the graphics card, or buy a new one? And if the latter then which ones are recommended for this system?

Daniel

[banhien]

Hi,

My suggestion for gamers: buy a new video card or uy a better machine. You machine is simply NOT for games.

Regards.

[HolyCows2000]

Thanks, yeah I think that pretty much sums it up.

[Big_Dave]

Hi,

There are new updates for Steam.  I just updated mine a few days ago.

Read through post as it might give you some more thoughts about your PC and gaming.

[HolyCows2000]

Thanks, that's helpful. I should point out my own curious finding though which is that despite the computer not being designed for games, it is only older ones that it struggles with. That leads me to believe it isn't really a performance issue. So for instance the computer cannot run the old Half Life 2 very well, but it can run both of its newer sequals perfectly. Strange.

[Big_Dave]

Hi,

If anything, the video processor in your PC may be weak for some modern PC games but OK for others.

The older game may need a patch or perhaps you need to update the DirectX 9 drivers.

I would agree that general PC performance is not the issue.

Try this Intel driver update utility and see if it picks you a later video driver.

Intel Driver Update Utility  Intel Driver Update Utility

[HolyCows2000]

I tried the Intel thing before and it said I should contact HP to see whether it was safe to download one of their generic drivers for the video card. Is it safe?

The patch idea is out and I tried directx 9 and it hasn't worked.

[Big_Dave]

Hi,

Did you update Steam? Did you check the Steam forum for ideas?

If you have doubt about using the Intel driver update process then do the following before applying the update:

1. Create a set of the HP Recovery Disks. There are good to have in case the recovery partition is bad.
2. Backup your PC and data to external media (you should be doing this on a regular basis anyway).
3. Create a Windows restore point.

If the driver update process goes poorly then use #3 and the worse case would be #1.