8. Why isn’t my graphics card compatible with Windows 10?
QI’m currently running Windows 7 Pro (64bit) and am eager to upgrade to Windows 10. I’ve been regularly clicking the Windows 10 Notification Area icon, and today I was disappointed to be told my PC won’t support the upgrade because it contains an Nvidia 7050 display adapter. But that’s not true – I upgraded my PC some time ago with an Nvidia Geforce 8400 GS PCI card. What can I do?
Barry Smith
AWe’ve had a lot of queries about compatible graphics and display drivers. In some cases, if your PC’S display adapter is very old, the manufacturer may have stopped supporting it, meaning there’ll be no official Windows 10 drivers available for it. You can check which display adapters are supported on the websites of Nvidia ( www.snipca. com/17634), AMD ( www.snipca. com/17635) and Intel ( www.snipca. com/17636).
If yours isn’t on the list, then you need to buy a new one. Consider the Geforce 210, which you should be able to find for less than £22 on Amazon ( www.snipca. com/17640). It is relatively easy to install.
But what’s perplexing is that Windows 10 does support your Geforce 8400 GS card. And yet the Windows 10 upgrade tool is mistakenly identifying it as an older, unsupported card. This could be because traces of older drivers are still hanging around somewhere in your system, so one solution would be to first download the latest driver from Nvidia ( www.snipca.com/17638). Next, open the Control Panel, click ‘Programs and Features’, find the driver you want to uninstall, then click ‘Uninstall/change’ (see screenshot below left). Then install the driver you’ve just downloaded.
Another option is to go ahead and upgrade to Windows 10 anyway (having backed up first), using the manual method outlined in our Workshop in Issue 456. In theory, Windows should simply install the correct driver itself during the upgrade, though it may install a generic display driver instead – to check, right-click Start and select Device Manager. The Geforce 8400 GS should be listed under ‘Display adapters’. If it isn’t, then download the Windows 10 driver from www.snipca. com/17638 and install it.