NEED ASSISTANCE with upgrading NVIDIA driver

To make sure I have the best I can get, I want to upgrade my

NVIDIA Geforce4 MX 420.

Haven't a clue what to do.

Never touched this, since I first received my computer.

What should I do to upgrade this?

Nvidia.com>Download Drives>Select Graphics Driver>Select Model>Select OS>Click Download and your driver should be updated

I don't know if it is fact or not, but I remember sometime hearing that drivers are best installed in Safe Mode... probably doesn't matter, but it can't hurt anything either.

Are you trying to upgrade your driver or your actual physical video card? For a driver upgrade, i think TheOneAndOnlyX hit the nail square on the head. For a new videocard, nVidia's best and newest, the GeForce 7800 GTX, is better than ATI's top card. (not sure what's ati's newest) You'll have to figure out whether your PC uses an AGP or PCI-Express interface for your videocard. A new videocard should come with installation instructions. I'll try to find the exact way to determine the difference between an AGP and a PCI-Ex connector and post back here in a sec.

I found a picture that shows the difference based on the "key" pattern of the card. Unfortunately, you'll have to open your computer and remove your videocard to check which kind you have. Careful removing the card, if you bend it sideways or apply excess pressure to either the card or the components on it, you can break it. Click HERE for that picture. You want to look for an AGP or a 16X PCI-Express. The Third type is for other cards, like soundcards and network cards.

I am just trying to upgrade (or whatever) on the internet. Could someone give me a decent walkthrough through this? I really don't want to mess my computer up...

You should be aware that the Geforce 420mx is slower than frozen molasses - we're talking geforce1 level performance. I'm not sure it'll be able to run Guildwars acceptably.

Regarding the upgrading, there's really nothing you can do wrong: download the all-in-one geforce driver package from www.nvidia.com, and execute it. Follow the on-screen directions. It's very straight forward and pretty much risk free.

If all things go well (the norm), just download the most current verions of the nvidia driver from there web site, and it will update all your driver.

The important thing is to make sure any anti-virus is disabled when you upgrade.

Now if you have to downgrade drivers or have issues where the upgrade did not work correctly, then you may have to take more advance steps.

Will upgrading improve performance?

It can and it fixes issues with specific card series and specific games but since the age of your video card you may not see much performance increase but it will fix issues with your card some newer games.