Video DriversHardware Acceleration

Video Drivers/Hardware Acceleration

Problem

Elements on the slides keep disappearing when you play the shows. The movies don't always show, the graphics look weird, there are extra lines in places you know you didn't put them and the colors are off. To make it all worse , it's a brand new computer!

Solution

Check the web to see if more recent video drivers have been released for the video card and monitor. Even brand new computers are not guaranteed to have the most recent drivers on them. The computer may be new to you, but unless you downloaded and installed the drivers yourself within the last day, the drivers could be out of date.

Some video drivers are updated as frequently as weekly. This is especially true for the drivers for higher- powered video cards and high quality monitors . Since the users of these devices depend on their content looking perfect on the screen, the device creators keep updates regularly available.

If you know you have the most recent drivers, and you are still having video problems, turn down the hardware acceleration a notch or two. You can do this from within PowerPoint using the Slide Show ’ Set Up Show dialog. Or, you can do this from the desktop by right-clicking to bring up the Properties, going to the Settings tab and clicking the Advanced button.

If everything is working great when you test the presentation on the computer, don't change anything until after you give the presentation. Sometimes a new driver breaks things instead of fixes things. If you update, be sure to test again.

Since installing new software on a machine can also break things, be sure to check the presentation still runs if you install any software that might influence your presentation. This includes fonts, printer drivers, multimedia programs, graphic programs and anything that might change the file associations.