How to upgrade your graphics drivers in Windows « Algodoo (2024)

First make sure you are logged in as administrator, i.e. not standard user. If you don’t know what this means, continue and hope for the best.

1. Press win+r (the “win” button is the one between left ctrl and alt).
2. Enter “devmgmt.msc” (without quotations) and press enter.
   
3. Under “Display adapters”, right-click your graphics card and select “Properties”.
   
4. Go to the “Driver” tab.
5. Click “Update Driver…”.
   
6. Click “Search automatically for updated driver software”.
   
7. Follow the on screen instructions.

If this fails, there is one other way to go about it, and that is downloading the drivers directly from the hardware vendor. Look at the name of the graphics card under the “Display adapters” (in the example image below it is “NIVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX/9800 GTX+”).

• If it starts with NVIDIA, go to www.nvidia.com
• If it starts with ATI, go to www.amd.com
• If it starts with INTEL, go to www.intel.com

In rare cases, some laptops will try to use the wrong graphics chipset for Algodoo (we’ve only heard of this problem on the “NVidia Optimus” chipset). Thankfully, the solution to this is straight-forward:

1. Right-click on desktop and click NVIDIA Control Panel
2. Select ‘Manage 3D Settings’ in the left pane
3. Select the “Program Settings” tab in the main window
4. Click ‘Add’
5. Navigate to your Algodoo folder (C:\Program Files (x86)\Algodoo) and select Algodoo.exe and press ‘open'(this step will probably depend on your operating system but should be pretty easy to find)
6. Where it says ‘Select the preferred graphics processor for this program’ click the drop-down and choose ‘High Performance NVIDIA processor’
7. Click ‘Apply’ in the bottom right and you’re good to go.